This brief section is all that Foxe devotes to the political history ofHenry VII's reign, and of the early reign of Henry VIII. Those aspects of this periodthat Foxe does briefly discuss fall under four headings: 1) an oblique attack on papal claims to jurisdiction over secular rulers, 2) an overt attack on the military campaignsof the Renaissance papacy, 3) stories of providential punishment on those who perse-cuted God's saints and 4) a summary of early Tudor dynastic history, particularly themarriage of Henry VIII to Katherine of Aragon, which is necessary background for later developments.

Foxe's sources for this section were all printed: Fabyan's chronicle, George Lily's chronicle and Bale's Catalogus. What is striking, however, is that is clear thatFoxe was led to examine Lily's chronicle by Bale's citations of it (Bale, Catalogus, p.643, p.644 and p.645). Fabyan was used to supply corroborative detail; here, as in so many places, Foxe was drawing his basic interpretation of events from Bale.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

Foxe's claim that he did not have the time to discuss these persecutionsis rhetoric; both persecutions were discussed by him in some detail. For examples of discussion, see the register of John Hales, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield (Lichfield Record Office, Register Hales, fo. 166r-v; printed, with a translation, in Lollards of Coventry, 1486-1522, ed. Shannon McSheffrey and Norman P. Tanner, Camden Society, Fifth series 23 [2003], 64-73, 91). Also see Archbishop James Ussher's '"Ex libro Detectionum Confessionum et Abjurationum haeretic" coram Johanne Lincolnensi episcopo an. 1521 (In Bibliotheca Lambetha)' (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775. fos. 128v-129r.

Foxe undoubtedly learned of Lily's account of this episode from Bale,who characteristically asserted that Lily 'gloriatur Henricum septimum hanc adorasseBabylonicam bestiam ac monstram Sodomiticum' (Catalogus, p. 645). Bale does notcite Fabyan. The account of the three orators being sent to the Pope is from George Lily, Chronicon (Frankfurt, 1560), fo. 66v. The account of embassies sent by the popes to Henry VII is from Robert Fabyan, The Chronicle of Fabian (London, 1559),STC 10663, p. 535.

Although Foxe cites Christian Massaeus as his source, he is drawingon Bale, Catalogus, p. 643, which gives the same citation from Massaeus.

The Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges upheld the autonomous authority of the church of France and disallowed papal nominations to vacant benefices. Thesanction was issued in 1438, not, as Foxe claims, in the reign of Henry VII (1485-1509).

Bale (Catalogus, p. 644) notes that Lily mentions the fire inNorwich and Bale concludes that it was providential revenge for the execution ofNoris. Lily, who recorded the fire (George Lily, Chronicon [Frankfurt, 1560], fo. 67r) said nothing about Noris. On Noris see John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae…Catalogus (Basel, 1557), p. 644. Bale has an additional detail not in Foxe: Noris was from Brockforth, Suffolk.

In the continuation of Fabyan's chronicle, the entry for a devastatingplague in London, immediately follows the entry recording the burning of an 'oldeheretick' in 1500. The chronicler did not associate the two incidents (Robert Fabyan, The Chronicle of Fabian [London, 1559], STC 10663, p. 532). On the heretic burnedin 1500 see The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas andI. D. Thornley [London, 1938], p. 294 and Fabyan’s Chronicle, ed. H. Ellis [London,1911], p. 687.

It is rather remarkable that Foxe mentions Empson and Dudley at all.Edmund Dudley was the grandfather of Robert Dudley, the earl of Leicester, who wasa sponsor of the Acts and Monuments. Foxe probably included this brief mention of them as a warning to evil counsellors. This warning would almost certainly have been more strident if it were not for Edmund Dudley's good fortune in descendants.

This section of the Acts and Monuments consists of three separatestrands. The first, and largest, is on account of the late medieval debates over the Immaculate Conception, which Foxe casts as a doctrinal schism between theFranciscans and the Dominicans. (Foxe's purpose in this was twofold: to discredit the mendicant orders and also to turn the charge of doctrinal disunity, frequently employed by the Catholics against the Protestants, back upon the Catholics). The second strand is a brief account of a notorious case of fraud that led to the execu-tion of four Dominicans in Berne in 1509; again, Foxe's objective was to discreditthe mendicant orders. He also used the episode to denounce the 'superstition' ofthe Church before Luther (he also used the debate over the Immaculate Conception and the Jetzer affair to denounce this 'superstition'). Finally, Foxe has a caustic summary of the bellicose career of Julius II.

Foxe's sources for this section are interesting and reveal something of bothhis wide reading in incunabula and his continuing contacts with the Continent. Foxe'saccount of the debates over the Immaculate Conception as taken entirely from Jodocus Clichtoveus's De puritate conceptionis beatae Mariae virginis (Paris, 1513).This work, by a highly respected Sorbonne theologian, sought to defend the immaculist position against Dominican attacks. (For a discussion of De puritatesee J-P Massaut, Critique et tradition à la vielle de la Réforme en France [Paris,1974], pp. 37-45). Foxe cites Peucer's edition of Carion's chronicle, Sebastion Munster's Cosmographia and Bale's Catalogus as sources for his account of thescandal at Berne. Undoubtedly Foxe read their brief accounts of the episode, buthe bases his account on - directly or indirectly - on Johann Stumpf's chronicleand possibly on Thomas Murner's scathing account of the affair. For Julius II, Foxe, as was often the case, turned to Bale.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

Jodocus Clichtoveus, De puritate conceptionis beatae virginis (Paris, 1513), fos. 45v-46r.

In the first decade of the sixteenth century, one Jetzer, a novitiate atthe Dominican convent in Berne, began to have visions of the Virgin Mary andvarious saints. Encouraged by the prior of the convent, Jetzer publicly announcedhis visions, which were confirmed by a statue of the Virgin that miraculously moved,wept, groaned, etc. These visions appear to have been originally intended to glorify the convent, but they rapidly came to have been used to buttress the Dominican order.Ultimately Jetzer claimed that the Virgin Mary denounced the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception in his visions. After an investigation by the Church, fourDominicans, including the prior (but not including Jetzer) were found guilty of fraud, handed over to the secular authorities and burned at Berne on 31 May 1509. (For details of the case see R. Reuss, 'La procès des Dominicains de Berne en 1507-1509',Revue de l'histoire des religions 52 [1905], pp. 237-59 and Die Akten des Jetzerprozesses nebst dem Defensionnium, ed. Rudolf Steck, Quellen zur Scweitzergeschichte 21 [Basel, 1904]). The affair became an international scandal,discussed in Erasmus's colloguy Exequiae Seraphicae (1531).

From this note, it is clear that Foxe was drawing on Johann Stumpf's chronicle, which contained a detailed account of the Jetzer affair (Johann Stumpf, Gemeiner loblicher Eydgenossschaft…Chronikwirdiger [Zurich, 1548], fos 455r-459r) and on civic records of the affair. (These may, or may not, have also includedThomas Murner's account of the affair, De quattor heresiarchis…in civitate Bernensicombustus, which was printed in Berne in 1509). These materials were probably sent to Foxe by a contact in Switzerland. (Since there is no evidence that Foxe could readGerman, and since Stumpf's chronicle was not available in Latin, Foxe's contactprobably translated extracts from it for the martyrologist).

Not the martyr St. Catherine, but St. Catherine of Siena, who was arguably the most famous Dominican mystic of the Middle Ages.

In fact, the Franciscans played no part at all in unmasking the Dominicans. The fraud was exposed by an investigation initiated by the bishop of Lausanne and furthered by a papal commission.

Foxe is using mendicant disagreements to support his claim that there is doctrinal disunity among Catholics.

Foxe now uses both the debate over the Immaculate Conception and the Jetzer affair to denounce the 'superstition' of the Church before Luther.

This summary of the wars of Julius II is drawn entirely from Bale, Catalogus, pp. 636 and 643-44.

Notice how Foxe exaggerates what was admittedly an intense debateinto a virtual schism which threatened to engulf Christendom.

All of the material on Sixtus IV's decree comes from Jodocus Clichtoveus, De puritate conceptionis beatae Mariae virginis (Paris, 1513), fos.22v-23v.

Sixtus IV's bull comes from Jodocus Clichtoveus, De puritateconceptionis beatae Mariae virginis (Paris, 1513), fo. 24r-v. As Foxe indicates, he is printing a paraphrase of the bull. It is also a somewhat misleading paraphrase; in actual fact, Sixtus IV mandated excommunication for anyone who denounced eitherthe maculist or immaculist positions as heretical.

These propositions were gleaned from a list of admittedly debatablepropositions about the Immaculate Conception which Jodocus Clichtoveus sought todefend (De puritate conceptionis beatae Mariae virginis [Paris, 1513], fos. 27v-35v).These propositions do not represent points of consensus among even immaculist theologians, much less, as Foxe states, required articles of faith for Catholics.

Jodocus Clichtoveus, De puritate conceptionis beatae virginis (Paris, 1513), fo. 23v.

Jodocus Clichtoveus, De puritate conceptionis beatae virginis (Paris, 1513), fo. 51r.

Jodocus Clichtoveus, De puritate conceptionis beatae virginis (Paris, 1513), fos. 47v-49v.

Jodocus Clichtoveus, De puritate conceptionis beatae virginis (Paris, 1513), fos. 49v-50r.

As Foxe's opening comments indicate, this section was intended as a preface for Foxe's account of the Hunne case which follows it. Foxe's purpose indescribing these late Lollard martyrs and confessors was, as always, to demonstrate the existence of the True Church before Luther (using the existence of the Lollards). Foxe also probably wished to make's Hunne's ordeal seem less exceptional and more part of a general pattern of persecution. With the exception of John Browne (see 1570 pp. 1453-1480; 1576, pp. 1239-41 and 1255; 1583, pp. 1276-1293), all of these Lollards are from the diocese of London. Foxe's source for these martyrs - except for his account of John Browne - is the register of Bishop Fitzjames or diocesan courtbooks that have not survived that Foxe drew upon.

Both the records and the Lollards themselves gave Foxe a good deal of trouble. The records not only listed numerous abjurations by the Lollards, they alsolisted of opinions they held which were embarrassing to Foxe. Occasionally Foxe tried to explain these inconvenient facts, more frequently, however, Foxesimply excised the offending passages from the documents that he quoted (as in the accounts of Joan Baker and William Pottier).

Thomas S. Freeman

The charges against William Pottier, and his replies to them, are obscure and clearly baffled Foxe, who was unusually candid in printing as much of them as he did. Pottier did, in essence, deny the benefit of Christ's passion, bystating that a person who committed a mortal sin was damned. (Perhaps this wasan attempt to deny the power of pennance or confession to absolve mortal sin). PaceFoxe, Pottier did not confess that the Trinity was only one God (Guildhall MS9531/9, fo.26v). Andrew Hope has persuasively argued that Pottier's confusing belief in six gods was a distortion of views commonly found in Lollard treatises(Andrew Hope, 'Lollardy: the Stone the Bulders Rejected?' in Protestantismand the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, ed. Peter Lake and MariaDowling [London, 1987], p. 18).

Pottier is referring to divination by listening to the sounds birds made.

From here until his discussion of Sweeting and Brewster, Foxe is clearly drawing on court books that are now lost (Foxe's knowledge of the ends of these two men came from a court book of Bishop Fitzjames, which is now lost). There is corroboration for the existence and heretical views of the heretics that Foxe discusses, including Sweeting and Brewster, in notes made by James Ussher (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775, fos. 122r-125r). There is additional corroboration in the fact that many of the people named here would later be in trouble again with the authorities for their religious beliefs (such as Thomas Austy, Thomas Vincent, Lewis John, Elizabeth Stamford and John Household).

The close family relationships of of many of these accused is also worth observing (For instance, Thomas Austy was the son-in-law of Thomas Vincent and Vincent may have been the father-in-law of Richard Hunne as well as of Austy).

Foxe would say this, but his asertion is corroborated by Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775, fo. 123r.

Thomas Austy was the son-in-law of Thomas Vincent (BL, Harley MS421, fo. 12r). In 1527, Austy would would be condemned to perpetual imprisonmentas an obdurate heretic, but he escaped.

Thomas Vincent was the father-in-law of Thomas Austy and possibly also the father-in-law of Richard Hunne.

Lewis John is almost certainly the same Lewis John who in 1508denied the presence of Christ's body in the sacramenrt of the altar and who would,be named as an associate of a Lollard burned in Buckinghamshire (J. A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards, 1414-1520 [)xford, 1965], p. 88).

Elizabeth Stamford and John Household would be examined again in 1517 and would then both abjure.

This is corroborated in Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775, fo.124v.

Bishop Fitzjames died on 15 January 1522 and was succeeded by Cuthbert Tunstall. Foxe's smooth transition here from one episcopate to anotheris yet another indication that he was using a court book and not an episcopalregister, which would have ended with the death of a bishop.

In this case 'great multitudes' actually means around 40 people.

John Hig would be dispensed for pennance imposed for a laterreligious offence in 1527 (TNA SP 1/47, fo. 80r).

Once again, Foxe is justifying both the occasional theologicallapses of these Lollards and also the fact that they abjured these beliefs.

Foxe gives fuller accounts of Sweeting and Brewster later in histext and more will be said about their interesting careers then. For now,suffice it to say that Foxe's knowledge of their ends came from a court book ofBishop Fitzjames, which is now lost. Thankfully, Archbishop James Ussher tookfairly full notes from this book of their case (Trinity College, Dublin, Dublin MS775, fos. 122v-124v). Sweeting and Brewster had already abjured before theirfinal arrests in 1511 and they burned as relapsed heretics on 18 October 1511.

Note Foxe's strenuous (and inaccurate) efforts to deny that Sweetingand Brewster had recanted despite archival records showing that they had. Noticealso how Foxe's argument has it both ways: it was probably a lie that Sweeting and Brewster had recanted, but if they had they had recanted and were burned neverthe-less, it demonstrated how cruel the Catholic prelates were.

Luke 17:3-4.

This section on John Browne first appeared in the 1583 edition.It is an abridged version of an account that had first appeared in 1570 (p. 1480). Thelonger account was reprinted in the 1583 edition (1583, pp. 1292-3), along with thisshorter account. Thus the 1583 edition had longer and shorter versions of this narrative printed almost 500 pages apart. The reason for this confusion is compli-cated. In the 1570 edition, Foxe had first printed a description of the proceedings against John Browne, drawn from Archbishop Warham's register (1570, pp. 1453-1455). Further on in the same edition, Foxe also printed the longer account of thisnarrative (1570, p. 1480). This narrative was derived not from official records, butas Foxe notes, was related to him by Browne's daughter Alice. Both of theseaccounts, the one from the register and the one from Alice Browne, were inserted into Foxe's book as it was being printed, consequently neither account appears in1511, when Browne's trial and execution actually took place. They were reprinted,in the same chronologically inaccurate locations in Foxe's text, in the next two editions (1576, pp. 1239-41 and 1255; 1583, pp. 1276-7 and 1292-3). However, Foxe then added this shorter version of Alice Browne's narrative, without, however, removing the longer version. This probably happened because Foxe decided to move the account of John Browne to its proper chronological place and decided to shorten it in the process. But for some reason, he neglected to remove the long version and also, more understanably, overlooked the account derived from Warham's register. As a result, there are three separate accounts of John Browne scattered across the pages of the 1583 edition (1583, pp. 805, 1276-77 and 1292-3) and all subsequentunabridged editions.

Low Sunday is the first Sunday following Easter. In 1511, this was 27 April.

Browne was burned in 1511; this is probably a simple typographicalerror.

If Browne was indeed totured in this manner, it was grossly illegal.But it should be remembered that this story passed from Browne's wife to theirdaughter to Foxe and none of these parties had any interest in minimizing Browne'ssufferings.

If correct, this would mean Browne had abjured in 1504. But it iscertainly incorrect. At his trial, Browne stated that 'he was abjured bifore my lordMorton, cardinal and archebisshop of Canterbury…xii teares past' (Kent HeresyProceedings, 1511-12, ed. Norman Tanner, Kent Records 26 [Maidstone, 1997],p. 48). This would place his abjuration around 1499. Archbishop Morton died in1500.

This is a very valuable (and rare) indication by Foxe of the assistancehe received in having official transcribed. It also indicates that, even for records in London, Foxe relied on transcriptions of archival documents, rather than examiningthe documents himself.

Here, and in the following passages, Foxe tries to justify both theoccasional 'erroneous' beliefs of the Lollards as well as their readiness to abjuretheir believes rather than die for them.

Foxe is stating here precisely why these Lollards were importantassets to his history, despite the their theological imperfections and 'weaknesses';they provided evidence that there was a church before Luther despite Catholicclaims to the contrary.

Foxe asserts that these names came from Bishop Fitzjames's register.Some of these people are mentioned in Fitzjames's register; most are not. Instead,Foxe was almost certainly drawing on a courtbook, now lost, of heresy trials in thediocese during this period (There is corroboration for these heretical trials in notes made by James Ussher (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775, fos. 122r-125r).

Foxe never does anything for the sake of brevity and that this is, in effect, a warning that he has edited these accounts to remove materials he found un-desirable.

Foxe abridges the articles against Joan Baker, although for the most part, he prints them accurately. Occasionally he refines Baker's language (sheactually said that she would do no more reverence to the crucifix in church than to a dog), but most importantly he supresses two of her replies. Interestingly, in bothcases where he did this, in was to conceal her anti-clericalism, not any doctrinaldeviance. Foxe omitted her statement that she could hear a better sermon at homethan any priest or doctor could give at Paul's Cross or anywhere else. Foxe alsodeleted her denunciation of clerical tithes (cf. Guildhall MS 9531/9, fo. 25r-v).Richard Hunne came to the attention of the auorities trying to defend Joan Baker(One of the articles charged against him at his posthumous heresy trial was that he had declared that Joan Baker - who was forced to do public pennance for her outspokenly heretical beliefs in 1511 - held correct views and that the bishop of London was more worthy of punishment than Baker.).

There is actually no evidence that Lady Jane Young, the wife of Sir John Young, a wealthy draper and Lord Mayor of London, was ever burned.Andrew Hope has argued that Joan Baker confused Jane Young with her motherJoan Boughton, who was burned at Smithfield on on 28 April 1494. It is true,however, that Jane Young was herself suspected of heresy. (See Andrew Hope,'The lady and the baliff: Lollardy among the gentry in Yorkist and early TudorEngland' in Lollardy and the Gentry in the Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond [Stroud, 1997], p. 260 and J. A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards,1414-1520 [Oxford, 1965}, pp. 156-7).

The case of Richard Hunne was notorious long before Foxe set pen to paper. It was a controversey that rocked both London and the English Church and an enormous amount of ink has been spilled over it, from the sixteenth century to the present. In the process, scholars have unearthed a great deal of information about the case and its background that was unknown to Foxe.

In March 1511, Richard Hunne's five-week-old son Stephen died at the house of hisnurse in Whitechapel. The child was buried in St. Mary Matfelon, the local church.Afterwards, the rector, Thomas Dryffeld demanded, as was his customary right, thechristening gown in which the boy's body was wrapped, as the mortuary fee. (A mortuary fee was a clerical tax which entitled the clergy to claim the most valuableitem among the deceased's possessions in return for conducting his or her funeral. Usually a monetary fee, negotiated by both sides, was paid in lieu of the item). Although the the fee Dryffeld demanded was customary, and Hunne who was wealthy, could easily afford it, Hunne refused to pay it. We know now - but Foxe had only an inkling of this - that this was only one of a number of conflicts thatHunne had had with the London clergy (see Brigden, London, pp. 98-99 for details).

Hunne's wife was born Anne Vincent and it is possible - although there is no proof ofthis - that she was a daughter or other relative of Thomas Vincent, a leading LondonLollard (Brigden, Lollard, p. 103). Whatever the truth of this, Hunne had, at a minimum, Lollard sympathies. One of the articles charged against him at his posthumous heresy trial was that he had declared that Joan Baker - who was forced todo public pennance for her outspokenly heretical beliefs in 1511 - held correct viewsand that the bishop of London was more worthy of punishment than Baker. Witnesses would later testify that Hunne owned forbidden Lollard works (John Fines,'The Post-Mortem Condemnation of Richard Hunne', JEH 78 [1963], pp. 528-31).

Thomas Dryffeld took Hunne to the Archbishop of Canterbury's court for the mortuary fee and the court ruled in his favour on 12 May 1512. On 27 December1512, Hunne left his own parish of Bridge Street, and attended vespers at St MaryMatfelon. Henry Marshall, Dryffeld's chaplain, denounced Hunne as accursed andstopped the service. Hunne sued Marshall for slander on 25 January 1513. Then, in Hilary term 1513, Hunne (who had still not paid the mortuary fee) brought a praemunire action brought against Dryffeld, Archbishop Warham and other clergyinvolved his case (S.C. F. Milsom, 'Richard Hunne's Praemunire', EHR 76 [1961],pp. 80-82. The Statute of Praemunire, among other things, made it treasonable totry a case in a church court which should have been tried in a royal court). In October1514, while the slander and praemunire cases were pending in King's Bench, Hunne was charged with heresy and taken to Lollard's Tower. On 2 December Hunne was examined by Bishop Fitzjames on charges of heresy. On 4 December his body wasdiscovered hanging from a beam in his cell. The church maintained that Hunne committed suicide. Yet there was widespread suspicion that Hunne had been murder-ed, particularly because one of Hunne's gaolers, Charles Joseph, fled and went into hiding on 10 December. A day later - very possibly in reaction to Joseph's flight - a posthumous heresy trial of Hunne began. Hunne was found guilty on 16 December and his body was burned at Smithfield four days later.

Meanwhile, in February 1515, the coroner's jury determined that Hunne had been murdered, and named William Horsey, Fitzjames's chancellor as well as Charles Joseph and Charles Spalding, Hunne's gaolers (and summoners for Bishop Fitzjames)as suspects. By early January, Joseph, who had taken sanctuary in Essex, was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower, along with Spalding. In April, Fitzjames ignited a political firestorm by writing a letter to the London civic authorities, accusing them of being maliciously determined to condemn his chancellor out of hand and defending Horsey's innocence. Fitzjames also pleaded with Wolsey to persuade the king to intervene and save Horsey. In November 1517, Henry VIII issued orderedthe Crown attorney to find Hunne not guilty (W. R. Cooper, 'Richard Hunne', Reformation 1 [1996], pp. 221-51). According to Thomas More, the indictments against Joseph and Spalding were also quashed by royal command (More, DialogueConcerning Heresies, CWTM, VI, 1, p. 326).

As a suicide and a condemned heretic, Hunne's property was forfeit. Attempts weremade to remedy for this. In 1515, two bills were introduced in Parliament: one torestore the propert Hunne forfeited as a heretic to his children and the other to have his death declared a murder. Both bills were defeated by the Lords. In May, 1523,however, Parliament did pass a bill restoring Hunne's property to his children. HenryVIII commanded Horsey to pay for the compensation to Hunne's family. As Hunne'sestate had been substantial (Foxe estimates it at around £1500, not counting jewelery and plate), this imposed a crippling financial burden on Horsey;.

The best accounts of the Hunne affair are Brigden, London, pp. 98-103, Cooper, 'Richard Hunne', pp. 221-51 and Peter Gwyn, The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (London, 2002), pp. 34-41. Cooper believes that Hunne was murdered and Gwyn argues that he was a suicide. Richard Marius has also forcefullyargued that Hunne was murdered, although his discussion contains some significant factual errors (Richard Marius, Thomas More [London, 1984], pp. 123-41).

Foxe's first account of the Hunne affair is in the Rerum. This is drawn from Hall's chronicle, although Foxe paraphrased and summarized it (cf. Rerum, pp. 119-21 withEdward Hall, The unyon of the twoo noble and illustre families of Lancastre and York[London, 1550], STC 12723a, fos. Lr-LVv). On the other hand, the account of Hunne in 1563 is a virtually word-for-word reprinting from Hall. (Hall's account, in turn, was a reprinting of a pro-evangelical tract, The enquirie and verdite of the quest paneld at at the death of R. Hune [Antwerp?, 1539?], STC 13970 There is no evidence, however, that Foxe even knew of this tract. Significantly, when pressed by Harpsfield on a factual detail, Foxe responded by citing Hall as his source [1570, p. 939]).

In 1566, Nicholas Harpsfield attacked Foxe's account of Hunne (Dialogi sex, pp. 847-849). Harpsfield's attacks and Foxe's defence will be discussed below but,for now, suffice it to say that Harpsfield's criticisms drove Foxe to investigate theaffair in more detail. In 1570, Foxe added more information, notably background onHunne's praemunire suit, Hunne's examination for heresy and his post-humous trial for heresy as well as mention of parliamentary and royalsecure compensation for Hunne's family. It is very likely that all of thisinformation came from Dunstan Whaplod, Hunne's grandson. Foxe declared thatthe material on the efforts to secure restitution for the Hunne family and 'all the braunches and particular evidences' of the Hunne case were 'taken out as well of thepublique actes, as of the Byshopes registers and speciall recordes, remainyng in thecustody of Dunstan Whapplot the sonne of the daughter of the sayd Richard Hunne'(1570, p. 936). From what Foxe declares, Whaplod had secured not only the materialregarding the compensation to his family, he also acquired some of the episcopalrecords regarding the Hunne case. These do not survive in Bishop Fitzjames's register and they were probably kept in a separate courtbook. Since Foxe states thatthey remained in Whaplod's hands, the martyrologist probably did not keep them. And in this edition Foxe also added a rebuttal to Harpsfield's attacks on his accountof Hunne.

But Foxe not only added to his original account of Hunne, he also subtracted from it.All of the depositions from the coroner's inquest, except that of Julian Littell, wasomitted from the 1570 edition, almost undoubtedly as part of the ongoing effort tosave on paper. Two of the depositions, those of Allen Cresswell and RichardHorsenail, were, however, restored in the 1583 edition.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

The condemnation of Hunne was held in the Lady Chapel of St. Paul's.

Cresswell's deposition was probably re-introduced in 1583 because it usefully established that Hunne had been manhandled by his gaolers. Horsenail's deposition was almost certainly re-introduced in 1583 because it implicated Horsley (albeit through hearsay) in Hunne's murder.

Charles paid a fee to register as someone seeking sanctuary.

A copy of the document (unknown to Foxe) survives as TNA 9/468, fo. 14r-v. This copy matches the version in STC 13970, reprinted by Hall and then by Foxe.

This passage, emphasizing that Horsey escaped due to a royal pardon, and not because he was innocent, is a response to Harpsfield's criticisms of Foxe's account of the Hunne affair.

Foxe does not make it clear, but this letter is from Henry VIII to William Horsey, written after 4 May 1523, when Parliament passed a bill ordering that restitution be made to Hunne's family for his property, which was confiscated when Hunne was condemned as heretic. Henry is ordering Horsey to pay the full cost of the restitution out of his own pocket, instead of having the Church or the Crown pay it.

Here, as elsewhere in the Acts and Monuments, Foxe is responding directly to criticisms of his work made by Nicholas Harpsfield in his Dialogi sex, printed in 1566. (Harpsfield's attack on Foxe's account of Hunne is on pp. 847-50). However, Harpsfield's influence on Foxe's account of Hunne was not limited to inspiring this rebuttal. It was almost certainly because of Harpsfield's attack that Foxe consulted the records held by Dunstan Whaplod, Richard Hunne's grandson. Although Harpsfield makes a point of referring Foxe to More's account of the Hunne affair - in his Dialogue Concerning Heresies (CWTM 6, I, pp. 317-20) - he does this largely to profit from More's reputation; a reputation which he even Foxe acknowledges. But for the most part, Harpsfield's arguments against Foxe are his own, and they develop along two lines. The first is a debate over whether Hunne deserves to be classed as a martyr since he did not die for a religious doctrine or cause. The second is over the details of the case. Foxe's polemical strategy is to stick to the documents produced by the inquest. Harpsfield's strategy is to ignore the inquest and to cast doubt on the implausible aspects of Foxe's account: e.g. why would Horsey want to murder Hunne?

Foxe is signalling to his readers - and to Harpsfield - that the documents he is quoting exist and that he is quoting them accurately.

More's Dialogue Concerning Heresies which contains More's account of the Hunne affair (CWTM, 6, I, pp. 217-30).

Harpsfield's Dialogi sex was printed under the name of Alan Cope, a friend of Harpsfield's and a fellow Catholic cleric. (See the articles on Alan Cope and Nicholas Harpsfield in the ODNB). When he wrote this rebuttal in 1570, Foxe thought that Cope was the author of the Dialogi sex.

The details and background to Hunne's praemunire suit were unknown to other sixteenth-century writers, yet they have been corroborated in the twentieth century by the discovery of the record of Hunne's suit (S. C. F. Milsom, 'Richard Hunne's Praemunire', EHR 86 [1961], pp. 80-2). Foxe probably learned the background to the praemunire suit from Dunstan Whaplod, Hunne's grandson.

A fascinating acknowledgement by Foxe of More's virtues; it is compelling evidence of the esteem in which More was held by even Elizabethan Protestants.

Foxe is quoting from More's account of the Hunne affair (CWTM, 6, I, p. 319).

Foxe doesn't bother to rebut More's arguments directly; instead, he goes right into repeating the damning report of the coroner's inquest on Hunne.

See CWTM, 6, I, pp. 326-7. In his Apology, More claimed that, after speaking with Hunne, he had worried that Hunne would kill himself (CWTM 9, p.126).

What Harpsfield actually said was that even if Hunne had been murdered (which Harpsfield did not believe) he still could not be considered a martyr 'unless we wish to regard those who have been slain in highways by thievesas martyrs also' [nisi volumus eos, qui publiciis viis a latronibus interimuntur, in Martyrum quoque albumreferre] (Dialogi sex, p. 847). Harpsfield was arguing that even if Hunne was murdered, he was not a martyr because he did not die for a religious cause.

At the end of his discussion of the Hunne affair, Harpsfield refers his readers to More's Dialogue Concerning Heresies for further details of the case (Dialogi sex, p. 849). William Tyndale, in a rejoinder to More, had briefly rebutted More's account of Hunne (William Tyndale, An Answere unto Sir Thomas Mores Dialoge, eds. Anne M. O'Donnell and Jared Wicks [Washington, DC, 2000], p. 168).

Foxe is misrepresenting Harpsfield; the latter conceeded no ambiguity at all about Horesey's innocence pf murder and Hunne's having committed suicide (Dialogi sex, pp. 847-8). All Harpsfield said was that 'if it was true' [si verum sit] that Hunne was murdered, then nevertheless Hunne was still not a martyr.

See 1 Kings 21: 1-16.

See CWTM, 6, I, p. 327 and Dialogi sex, p. 848.

This is an interestng concession by Foxe (and one made for tactical forensic reasons in his exchange with Harpsfield) that Protestant doctrines were not all held by Lollards and proto-Protestants . Hunne's rosary is mentioned in the report of the coroner's jury. Whether Foxe knew, or assumed, that Hunne attended Mass daily is unclear, although he may have learned of this from Dunstan Whaplod.

It is far more likely that Dryffeld was forced, as a matter of principle, not to overlook Hunne's challenge to the custom of collecting mortuary fees.

This is Foxe's loose, but not substantially inaccurate, translation of Harpsfield's 'nisi volumus eos, qui in publiciii viis a latronibus interimuntur, in Martyrum quoque album referre' (Dialogi sex, p. 847).

These are good questions. It may be that the authorities chose to wait until Hunne's praemunire case was settled before trying Hunne for heresy. It may also be that they were reluctant to try Hunne for heresy at all and were intimidating him in the hopes of securing a recantation, or at the least, his silence. What is certain, however, is that Hunne's posthumous heresy trial was an emergency measure triggered by his sudden death and Joseph's sudden flight.

William Tyndale, An Answere Unto Sir Thomas Mores Dialoge, eds. Anne M. O'Donnell and Jared Wickes (Washington, DC, 2000), p. 168.

Dialogi sex, p. 849.

The coroner's jury declared in their verdict that there was a murrey (i.e., a mulberry coloured) gown lying on the stocks in Hunne's cell, although they also declared that the gown was whisked away from the cell before the jury visited it. The jury clearly suspected that the gown belonged to Horsey but they explicited stated that there was no proof of this. Foxe is accepting as absolute fact that the gown was present in Hunne's cell and that it belonged to Horsey.

Harpsfield makes this argument in Dialogi sex, p. 848.

Harpsfield, at one point, speaks erroneously of Hunne as having been 'held in prison and convicted of heresy' [haereseosque convictum et constrictum teneret] (Dialogi sex, p. 848). Foxe is correct to point out that Hunne was only convicted of heresy posthumously.

See Dialogi sex, pp. 848-9. Harpsfield is, as Foxe declares, is repeating More (see CWTM, 6, I, pp. 326-7).

I.e., the 1563 edition.

Technically, Horsey was never pardoned. He was acquitted by means of a directed verdict.

This statement assumes that the clergy only charged Hunne with heresy because of the praemunire suit. The opposite could also be true: that Hunne initiated the suit, as pre-emptive strike, because he suspected that heresy charges might be brought against him.

See CWTM, 6, I, p. 325, for More explaining that Hunne's accepting what was, in effect, a royal pardon did not necessarily mean that Horsey was guilty.

In the Rerum (p. 121), Foxe stated that the foreman of the coroner's jury had been bribed to find Horsey not guilty. In the 1563 edition (p. 391), he claimed that the King's Attorney had been bribed to find Horsey innocent. Harpsfield pointed out the contradiction and demanded what proof Foxe had of either charge? (Dialogi sex, p. 848). Foxe avoids the issue of bribery (by 1570, he knows that Henry VIII ordered Horsey to found innocent) by stating, after some bluster, that he had repeated what Edward Hall had said in his chronicle.

Edward Hall, The unyon of the twoo noble and illustre families of Lancastre and York (London, 1550), fo. Lv.

Detailed evidence on this point was presented at Hunne's posthumous trial for heresy; see John Fines, 'The Post-Mortem Condemnation for Heresy of Richard Hunne', EHR 78 (1963), pp. 530-1.

Foxe's arguments against the authority of the note in the register - which unfortunately is no longer extant - do not stand up to scrutiny. The first argumentassumes that Hunne's death was deliberately planned by the clergy; if Hunne's deathwas a suicide, an accident or even murder carried out by overzealous underlings, Foxe's point is invalid. The phrase 'ut dicitur' was not sinister, it merely meant thatthe scribe who was recording Hunne's remark was writing down, not what he hadwitnessed, but what others related to him.

Arthur Ogle argued that the very Bible, from whose prologue these articles were drawn, is the Wiclif B Bible which is now Corpus Christi College, Parker MS 147. (Arthur Ogle, The Tragedy of the Lollard's Tower [Oxford, 1949], pp. 113-31).This debateable, but it is certain, that the articles were drawn from a copy of theWiclif B Bible.

Notes which James Ussher took of the depositions of those testifying against (which Foxe consulted but which no longer survive) show that Hunne owned vernacular translations of Scripture and forbidden Lollard works, but they contain no other accusations of heretical belief and practice (John Fines, 'The Post-Mortem Condemnation for Heresy of Richard Hunne', EHR 78 [1967], pp.530-1).

This was apparently to guide Fitzjames through the ceremony posthumously condemning Hunne. Such a ceremony was unprecedented in England and a proper form of ritual had to be devised.

Foxe's account of these victims of a crackdown against heresy initiated by Bishop Fitzjames of London in the years 1517-20, comes largely from a now lost courtbook of London diocese. Some of the material in this courtbook, however, was summarized in notes taken by Archbishop James Ussher (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775, fos. 122r-125r). For the case of Thomas Man he appears to have also drawn on a courtbook from Lincoln diocese, which is now missing. He also used the Lincoln court book to correct and amplify cases that he had already discussed. Perhaps Foxe acquired the L courtbook whilst the 1570 edition was being printed. Or alternatively it may be the case that he collated the information he received from individual informants with other material which he found in the diocesan records. Once again, Foxe was concerned use these Lollards to show that there was a 'True Church' before Luther.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

This would have placed Man's first arrest in 1512; Man was actually been arrested and tried in 1511.

These articles are almost certainly taken from a lost court book from the diocese of Lincoln. C 189/12 Foxe is reconstructing the details of More's abjuration and escape from the charges made against Man in London in 1518.

Foxe is reconstructing the details of More’s abjuration and escape from the charges made against Man in London in 1518.

Man clearly possesed some useful skill; he may have been an artisan, or perhaps even a bailiff or steward.

This was a badge that some people convicted of heresy were compelled to wear identifying them as penitents convicted of heresy; removing it was an offence in itself.

Note that Foxe is careful, in a marginal note, to state that Man denigrated the veneration offered to an image of the Virgin Mary and not Mary herself.

Even if this number is a wild exaggeration, Man was clearly an influential Lollard with a sizeable following.

I.e., members of the Court of Arches, the central ecclesiastical court in medieval England.

Bishop Bonner's summoner was also named Robert Cluney; either there was a single long-lived individual, or, more likely, they were father and son.

This information cannot be in the official records of More's trial; presumably Foxe had an oral source for this.

I.e., members of the Court of Arches, the central ecclesiastical court in medieval England.

This implies that Man was executed immediately after his trial, and states that the authorities did not wait for the writ authorizing his execution. Actually the signification of Man's excommunication was sent to Chancery, dated 1 March 1518. If Foxe is correct in stating that Man was executed on 29 March, then clearly there was an interval between condemnation and execution and it is virtually certain that it was spent awaiting the proper authorization for the execution.

This is a slang name for a cell in Newgate where the condemned awaited execution.

Foxe is reminding his readers of the extent and longevity of the Lollard congregations as part of his efforts to show that there was a 'True Church' before Luther.

William Tilesworth was excommunication and the signification of this excommunica-tion and commitment to the secular authority survives and is dated 10 August 1511 (TNA C 85/115/10). Although the date Foxe gave was incorrect, this document - which lists Robert Cosin, William Scrivener, Nicholas Collins and Thomas Man as also being condemned - shows that, in this case, apart from the date, the information from Foxe's aged informants was essentially accurate.

There is no surviving information on Thomas Chase apart from theaccount in Foxe. This account - as Foxe makes clear - is based on testimony from contemporaries to the events and the cruelty with which Chase was treated undoubt-edly lost nothing in the telling. It seems reasonable to accept that Thomas Chase wasarrested for heresy and committed suicide in prison. There is no way of telling whathappened beyond that but claims that he was murdered seem far-fetched.

This must be Robert Cosin, of Little Missenden, who is recorded on TNA C 85/115/10 as being condemned to death for heresy. Foxe will laterdescribe the execution of Thomas Man, but he says nothing about the executionsof William Scrivener or Nicholas Collins.

This is Foxe's most explicit reference to drawing on a court book (now missing) for Lollards persecuted by William Smith, the bishop of Lincoln.

Andrew Hope, 'The lady and the bailiff: Lollardy among the gentry in Yorkist and Tudor England' in Lollardy and the gentry in the later Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond (Stroud, 1997), pp. 250-277, provides a definitive study of Sweeting and his background.

William Sweeting acquired the alias of 'Clerk' because he was a water clerk at the parish church at Boxted for seven years.

Lady Margery Wood was the wife of Sir John Wood, speaker of of Edward IV's last Parliament and Richard III's first treasurer. Sweeting was bailiff of Lady Margery's manor of Rivers Hall at Boxted. (See Andrew Hope, 'The lady and the bailiff: Lollardy among the gentry in Yorkist and Tudor England' in Lollardy and the gentry in the later Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond (Stroud, 1997), p. 256.

Foxe's warm endorsement of these Lollards for their spiritual knowledge, is a consequence of his desire to show that there was a 'True Church' before Luther. But it also has an interesting, if implicit, anti-authoritarian message, that ordinary people might have spiritual insights denied to their superiors in status and education.

Charles Joseph would later become infamous as the gaoler and suspected murderer of Richard Hunne.

This is actually Rotherhithe.

I.e., a cowherd.

I.e., 26 July. Sweeting and Brewster were both arrested when various Lollards, informed on them under questioning; see Andrew Hope, 'The lady and the bailiff: Lollardy among the gentry in Yorkist and Tudor England' in Lollardy and the gentry in the later Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond (Stroud, 1997), p. 265. Archbishop Ussher's notes of these interrogations, the originals of which no longer survive, are in Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775, fo. 124r.

I.e., they discussed the gospel of Matthew.

I.e., 25 July.

Sweeting and Brewster had both abjured at Paul's Cross on 15 March 1505 (The Great Chronicle of London, ed. A. H. Thomas and I. D. Thornley [London, 1938], p. 331).

The original records have not survived, but Archbishop Ussher's notes, taken from them, partially corroborate Foxe's version (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775, fo. 123v.

This might be the same Henry Hart who was a leader of the 'Freewillers' in the 1550s. This point is discussed in Patrick Collinson, 'Nightschools, conventicles and churches: continuities and discontinuities in early Protestant ecclesiology' in The Beginnings of English Protestantism, ed. Peter Marshall and Alec Ryrie (Cambridge, 2002), p. 227, n.81.

John Bardfield was elected as one of the two bailiffs of Colchester (the highest municipal office in the city) in 1505. (See Andrew Hope, 'The lady and the bailiff: Lollardy among the gentry in Yorkist and Tudor England' in Lollardy and the gentry in the later Middle Ages, ed. Margaret Aston and Colin Richmond [Stroud, 1997], pp. 261-64).

Regrettably there is no surviving record of Elizabeth Stamford's trial. Almost certainly, Foxe obtained it from a London court book.

Maozim, or 'the god of fortresses' appears in Daniel 11:38. The term is being used here to designate an idol.

The signification of the excommunication of Sweeting and Brewster, and their transfer to the secular authorities for execution, is dated 14 September 1511 (TNA C/85/126/19).

This is apparently the Elizabeth Sampson, whose previous trial for heresy in 1509, was also recorded by Foxe. These articles bear a close relation to the previous charges against her, particularly in her denuncia- tion of pilgrimages to the images of the Virgin Mary at Willesden and Bermondsey and in her sacramentarianism. But the charges of her spitting at the Virgin Mary's name, her denouncing the invocation of the Virgin Mary by women during childbirth and her claim that it was better to eat the altercloth than the Eucharist, are new.

Unfortunately there is no surviving record of this case.

For the wide circulation of these works among the London Lollards, and the importance these texts held for them, see Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation (Oxford, 1991), pp. 89-91.

The full record for Stillman's trial does not survive, but there are references to it in Archbishop Ussher's notes, taken from the London courtbook before it disappeared. These notes corroborate Stillman's claiming that Wiclif was a saint in heaven and that Wiclif's Wicket was a good and holy work (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775, fos. 124r and 125r). Moreover, Stillman had indeed been tried for heresy by Bishop Edmund Audley of Salisbury (J. A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards, 1414-1520 (Oxford. 1965), pp. 83-84).

This detailed account of Thomas Man appears to be based on two sources that are now lost: a court book of the diocese of London recording heresy trials under Bishops Fitzjames and Tunstall, and a court book of the diocese of Lincoln, recording heresy trials under Bishops Smith and Longland. (The Lincoln courtbook probably also contained the now lost records of Longland's persecution in the Chilterns in 1521). Foxe may also have had an unnamed informant for Thomas Man's execution. Foxe's account of Man is very convincing in its circumstantial detail. There is also one piece of corroboration for it: the signification of Man's excommunication and transfer to secular authority for execution and it is dated 1 March 1518 (TNA C 85/126/28).

Of all the sections of Foxe's book, this account of the persecution of the Lollards in the Chilterns, may be the most valuable to students of late medieval English religion. One reason for its value is that is based on court books from the diocese of Lincoln that are now missing. However, there is some corroboration for Foxe's account of these persecutions. In the seventeenth century, Archbishop James Ussher copied twelve lines into one of his notebooks '"Ex libro Detectionum Confessionum et Abjurationum haeretic" coram Johanne Lincolnensi episcopo an. 1521 (In Bibliotheca Lambetha)' (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775. fos. 128v-129r). Furthermore, the signification to Chancery survives of the excommunication of four heretics - named by Foxe - who were burned in Longland's persecution. Foxe did not invent the persecution and he is probably accurate in his description of the scope of the persecution and the people affected by it. But the extent to which he rewrote the beliefs of those accused of heresy, or omitted material he felt was damaging, will never be known.

The second reason for the value of these records lies in the systematic manner in which Bishop John Longland investigated heresy in his diocese. The bishop began his inquiries by questioning those who had previously abjured and were thus vulnerable to being charged as relapsed heretics. Moreover, once they had abjured again, they were required to inform on other heretics, to demonstrate their sincerity. By this means, one heretic incriminated several others, each of whom incriminated others and ultimately Longland detected about 50 heretics. Four of these people were burned and the rest were obliged to do penance.

Longland's persecution not only confirms that Lollardy was entrenched in the chilterns, it also demonstrates that in towns, such as Amersham, were almost completely controlled by them and that the local elites were disproportionately Lollard in sympathy. (For discussion of this see Derek Plumb, 'John Foxe and the Later Lollards of the Thames Valley' [Cambridge PhD, 1987], pp. 274-76 and Andrew Hope, 'Lollardy: the stone the builders rejected?' in Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, ed., Peter Lake and Maria Dowling (Beckenham, Kent, 1998], pp. 3-4 and 9-10). On occasion, the Lollard minorities were even able to intimidate the orthodox Catholics in the region. All of this was, of course, manna from heaven to Foxe, who used this material to show that there was a 'True Church' in England.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

Foxe attended Brasenose College, which might explain his relatively lenient assessment of Bishop Smith.

One scholar has declared that 'Longland took almost a sportsman's delight in apprehending preachers or intellectuals who were propagating heresy' (Margaret Bowker, The Henrician Reformation: The diocese of Lincoln under John Longland 1521-1547 [Cambridge, 1981], p. 61). It is also worth noting that abjuration and even informing on others were not necessarily sufficient to save a heretic. Longland burned his chief witness, Thomas Holmes.

In this case, an 'incredible mutitude' is about 50 people.

It is worth noting that these questions, rather unusually, are designed to gain information on the identity of other heretics, rather than to identifying the specific theological opinions of the accused. This is very characteristic of Longland's methods of investigation.

What follows is a detailed - and, as far as we can tell, accurate - description of Longland's procedure in investigating heresy.

A Thomas Harding and his wife were listed among those who had abjured in 1511. In 1532, Thomas Harding will be burned for heresy.

This incident shows the local power of the Lollards in the Chilterns; here they are pressuring an individual to retract his negative of a Lollard martyr.

The date given by Foxe of Tilesworth's excommunication is incorrect; the signification of Tilesworth's excommunication and commitment to the secular authority survives and is dated 10 August 1511 (TNA C 85/115/10). But this document - which lists Robert Cosin, William Scrivener, Nicholas Collins and Thomas Man as also being condemned - shows that, in this case, apart from the date, the information from Foxe's aged informants was essentially accurate.

John Scrivener will be burned in 1521; see TNA, C/85/115/13.

A James Morden was handed over to the secular arm for burning in 1522 (TNA C/185/115/13).

If Smith was burned in in 1518, then he was prosecuted while Bishop William Atwater held the see of Lincoln. Foxe probably obtained his knowledge of this case from the testimony of John Say.

There is no surviving information on Thomas Chase apart from theaccount in Foxe. This account - as Foxe makes clear - is based on testimony from contemporaries to the events and the cruelty with which Chase was treated undoubt-edly lost nothing in the telling. It seems reasonable to accept that Thomas Chase wasarrested for heresy and committed suicide in prison. There is no way of telling whathappened beyond that but claims that he was murdered seem far-fetched.

John Hacker was an extraordinarily influential Lollard with a long career; see J. A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards, 1414-1520 for details. Hacker will be arrested in London in 1527 and in 1528, he would abjure and give the names of over 40 other Lollards to the authorities (1563, p. 418 and BL, Harley 421, fos. 11r-14r).

This is interesting evidence of the wealth of some of these Lollards and their ability to use it to subvert the authorities.

Richard Saunders's property was assessed at £300 and he was by far the wealthiest person in Amersham (Andrew Hope, 'Lollardy: The stone the builders rejected?' in Protestantism and the National Church, ed. Peter Lake and Maria Dowling [Beckenham, Kent, 1987], p. 10).

A John Phipp appeared on the list of those in the Amersham area who abjured in 1511. It probably was not the same person, since Phipp was not executed for relapse in 1521, but it could well have been a close relative.

Robert Cosin, of Little Missenden, is recorded on TNA C 85/115/10 as being condemned to death for heresy. Foxe will later describe the execution of Thomas Man, but he says nothing about the executions of William Scrivener or Nicholas Collins. The account of Thomas Man appears to be based on two sources that are now lost: a court book of the diocese of London recording heresy trials under Bishops Fitzjames and Tunstall, and a court book of the diocese of Lincoln, recording heresy trials under Bishops Smith and Longland. (The Lincoln courtbook probably also contained the now lost records of Longland's persecution in the Chilterns in 1521). Foxe may also have had an unnamed informant for Thomas Man's execution. Foxe's account of Man is very convincing in its circumstantial detail. There is also one piece of corroboration for it: the signification of Man's excommunication and transfer to secular authority for execution and it is dated 1 March 1518 (TNA C 85/126/28).

Norman is informing on two figures already executed for heresy; this was probably a way for him to fulfil his oath to inform on others without incriminating someone who could be harmed. The account of Thomas Man appears to be based on two sources that are now lost: a court book of the diocese of London recording heresy trials under Bishops Fitzjames and Tunstall, and a court book of the diocese of Lincoln, recording heresy trials under Bishops Smith and Longland. (The Lincoln courtbook probably also contained the now lost records of Longland's persecution in the Chilterns in 1521). Foxe may also have had an unnamed informant for Thomas Man's execution. Foxe's account of Man is very convincing in its circumstantial detail. There is also one piece of corroboration for it: the signification of Man's excommunication and transfer to secular authority for execution and it is dated 1 March 1518 (TNA C 85/126/28).

This may be John Stillman. The full record for Stillman's trial does not survive, but there are references to it in Archbishop Ussher's notes, taken from the London courtbook before it disappeared. These notes corroborate Stillman's claiming that Wiclif was a saint in heaven and that Wiclif's Wicket was a good and holy work (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 775, fos. 124r and 125r). Moreover, Stillman had indeed been tried for heresy by Bishop Edmund Audley of Salisbury (J. A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards, 1414-1520 (Oxford. 1965), pp. 83-84).

This is not the Thomas Harding who will be burned for heresy but someone with the same name.

If Smith was burned in in 1518, then he was prosecuted while Bishop William Atwater held the see of Lincoln. Foxe probably obtained his knowledge of this case from the testimony of John Say.

She was the sister of William Tilsworth.

This is an error (probably typographical): this information came the Lincoln court book, not London.

Foxe is interested in demonstrating the zeal of the Lollards in acquiring godly literature, but this is also an indication of the affluence of many of these Lollards. On the importance of books to the Lollards see Margaret Aston, 'Lollardy and Literacy' in Lollards and Reformers: Images and and literacy in late medieval England (London, 1984), pp. 1-47.

A wooden snare for catching fish.

Thomas Holmes informed against so many people that even Foxe is reluctant to credit him as a martyr; yet it was not enough to save him. Why he was treated with such unusual severity is unclear.

Given Richard Saunders' relative wealth, this was not an empty threat.

John Schorne (or Shorne) was a priest renowned for his personal sanctity and zealous pastoral care of his flocks. Although never canonized, there was a flourishing cult to him and his shrine at Windsor was a popular place of pilgrimage on the eve of the Reformation.

Thomas Rave was sentenced to carry a faggot, as a mark of shame, in pennance. Putting a lace on it made a mockery of his penance.

The date Foxe gives for Tilesworth's excommunication is incorrect; the signification of Tilesworth's excommunication and commitment to the secular authority survives and is dated 10 August 1511 (TNA C 85/115/10). But this document - which lists Robert Cosin, William Scrivener, Nicholas Collins and Thomas Man as also being condemned - shows that, in this case, apart from the date, the information from Foxe's aged informants was essentially accurate.

I.e., communion wafers.

Quite possibly one or both of these Thomas Mans were the same person as the martyr.

John Stacy, a warden of the bricklayers company. He will be charged in 1531 for aiding - and having converted - the evangelical martyr Richard Bayfield (1570, p. 1161; 1576, p. 993 and 1583, p. 1021). He will testify against Thomas Phillips and then abjured (1570, p. 1185; 1576, p. 1014 and 1583, pp. 1041-1042).

Once again, Foxe is using the records of Lollard trials to show that there was a 'True Church' before Luther.

A pointmaker of the parish of Micheal le Querne, London. John Hacker informed on him in 1528. He was imprisoned and later held in the house of Thomas More (then Lord Chancellor), who turned him back over to Bishop Stokesley (BL, Harley MS 421, fo. 13r; More, Apology, CWTM 9, p. 126). He abjured, but abjured his abjuration and was imprisoned in the Tower (1570, pp. 1185-6, 1576, p. 1014; 1583, p. 1042). He remained imprisoned in the Tower, but working as a gaoler. In this capacity he aided evangelical prisoners (BL, Harley MS 425, fo. 138v).

The whore of Babylon; see Rev. 17:1-6.

William Russell, a tailor of Coleman Street, London, hosted Lollardconventicles in his house during the 1520s (Susan Brigden, London and the Reformation [Oxford, 1989], p. 103).

Alice Doyly had married three times; first to a John Wilmot, the second time to William Cottesmere, a member of an important gentry family and the third time to Thomas Doyly, the head of one of Oxfordshire's most ancient gentry families. By the time of her third marriage her moveable goods alone were estimated at £1000 (Andrew Hope, 'Lollardy: The Stone the Buiders Rejected?' in Protestantism and the National Church in Sixteenth Century England, ed., Peter Lake and Maria Dowling [Beckenham, 1987], pp. 8-10). Alice would be investigated again for heresy (whether as a result of this testimony or on later charges is unknown) but there is no record of her being convicted.

Rev. 9: 17-20.

I.e., Maundy Thursday.

Notice how Foxe manages to subtly suggest how extensive Lollardy was, all of which is designed to show that there was a True Church before Luther.

This document has not survived and it was probably copied into the lost courtbook of Bishop Longland.

Notice how often the same individuals and families occur as in previous, similar lists.

Foxe is interested in demonstrating the zeal of the Lollards in acquiring godly literature, but this is also an indication of the affluence of many of these Lollards. On the importance of books to the Lollards see Margaret Aston, 'Lollardy and Literacy' in Lollards and Reformers: Images and and literacy in late medieval England (London, 1984), pp. 1-47.

The signification of the excommunication and relaxation of these four people survives as TNA, C/85/115/13.

Thomas Holmes informed against so many people that even Foxe is reluctant to credit him as a martyr; yet it was not enough to save him. Why he was treated with such unusual severity is unclear.

See Phillipe de Commines, De Carlo Octavo…et bello Neapolitano Commentarii, trans. Johann Sleidan (Paris, 1561), pp. 205-12. Notice how, once again, Foxe is emphasizing the evil effects of persecution upon families.

This is the 'Yomand Dorman' (i.e., yeoman Dorman) listed before by Foxe.

For other evidence of Foxe's conducting inquiries among those still living about past persecutions in the chiltern, see the sources used for information on William Tilesworth and Thomas Chase: for information on both of these men, Foxe used aged informants whose accounts proved remarkably accurate.

Thomas Dorman, a Catholic polemicist and critic of Foxe. Foxe refers, in his marginal note, to the opening sentence of Thomas Dorman's dedication to his A proofe of certayne articles in religion (Antwerp, 1564), STC 7062, in which Dorman described himself as having been 'a young novyce of Calvins religion.

Dorman never said this. Foxe has apparently confused Dorman with Thomas Harding, who called Foxe's book, 'that huge dungehill of your stinking martyrs which you have intituled the Actes and Monumentes' (Thomas Harding, Confutation of a Book intituled an Apology of the Church of England [Antwerp, 1565], STC 12762, fos. 13v-14r). The phrase afterwards became something of a Catholic trope.

Here Foxe dexterously identifies the Lollards with the Protestants, implicitly establishing that Protestant teachings went back to (at least) Wiclif.

Foxe is genuinely shocked by Bishop Longland's methods of investigation, which undermined the integrity of both family and community.

William Smith (1495-1514) was succeeded as bishop of Lincoln by Thomas Wolsey (1514) and William Atwater (1514-21) before John Longland (1521-47) became bishop.

Although Longland does seem to have been rigorous, it should, in fairness, be noted that, unlike Smith, he was dealing with people who previously abjured and also that his systematic method of investigation ensured that he detacted numerous heretics.

This section epitomizes Foxe approaching one of his major themes, the existence of the True Church before Luther, from a novel angle. In the preceding sections dealing with the Lollards in the dioceses of Lincoln and London, Foxe emphasized their numbers and tried to show that an understanding of the gospel preceded the Reformation. In this section, Foxe tries to make the same point, by providing the examples of a few well-known Reform-minded English clergyman - John Colet and William Grocyn - and also the examples of two English anticlerical authors, Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower. (It should be emphasized that all of the figures discussed in this section were, contrary to Foxe's implications, orthodox Catholics - particularly Colet and Grocyn - and that none of them can justly considered a Lollard sympathiser, much less a proto-Protestant).

For Colet and Grocyn, Foxe's sources were various writings of Erasmus, although he judiciously edited them. For Gower and Chaucer he draws largely on John Bale's Catalogus.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

See 1570, pp. 1124-25; 1576, pp. 962-3 and 1583, pp. 989-990.

What follows on Gower is from John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae…Catalogus (Basel, 1557), p. 525, except for the description of Gower's tomb, which Foxe must have seen for himself.

The sparse biographical information on Chaucer that follows is from John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae…Catalogus (Basel, 1557), p. 525

The first edition of Chaucer's collected works was printed in 1532 (STC 5068).

The description of Chaucer as a 'right Wicklevian' is Foxe's own composition.

The 'Ploughman's Tale' is not by Chaucer. It was an anonymous medieval work, possibly partly rewritten to increase its anti-papal slant, attributed to Chaucer and printed as part of 'The Canterbury Tales'.

The pelican and the griffon are the two protagonists of the 'Ploughman's Tale'.

Bale mentioned that Chaucer was buried in Westminster abbey, but the description of his tomb is not in Bale. Presumably Foxe saw it or had a description sent to him.

Foxe is interested in demonstrating the zeal of the Lollards in acquiring godly literature, but this is also an indication of the affluence of many of these Lollards. On the importance of books to the Lollards see Margaret Aston, 'Lollardy and Literacy' in Lollards and Reformers: Images and and literacy in late medieval England (London, 1984), pp. 1-47.

The following account of Colet is abridged from Erasmus's mini- biography in Colet in his letter to Justas Jonas, dated 13 June 1521. (The letter is printed is epistle 1211 in The Correspondence of Erasmus, Letters 1122-1251, trans. R. A. B. Mynors and annotated Pieter G. Bietenholz [Toronto, 1998]; the section on Colet is on pp. 233-43). Foxe's abridgement involves more than saving space. While Foxe is accurate in what prints, he omits certain details Erasmus provided - such as Colet's celibacy, his avoiding the company of laymen, his desire to join the Carthusians and his strong approval of auricular confession - that do not fit with Foxe's idea of a proto-Protestant divine.

Foxe exaggerates what Erasmus writes. What Erasmus actually said was that Colet was relatively tolerant sexual misconduct by priests, but that Colet still regards clerical failure to maintain celibacy as a vice. Erasmus does not record Colet saying anything in favor of married clergy (The Correspondence of Erasmus, Letters 1122-1251, trans. R. A. B. Mynor and annotated Pieter G. Bietenholz [Toronto, 1988], p. 239).

Foxe is repeating Erasmus's estimate of Bishop Fitzjames's age. The bishop's date of birth is unknown, but he must have been in his seventies at this time.

In other words, Colet argued that the gospel command, 'Feed my sheep' was meant spiritually, but not materially. The passage had been used to argue that the clergy were enjoined to hospitality, but Colet's understanding of the passage was hardly novel.

In other words, Colet criticized those who read their sermons from notes, rather than delivering it from memory.

William Tyndale, An Answere unto Sir Thomas Mores Dialoge, ed. A. M. O'Donnell and Jared Wicks (Washington, DC, 2001), p. 168.

This account of Grocyn's lectures comes from Erasmus's Declarationes ad censuras Lutetiae vulgatus [1532] (Desiderus Erasmus, Opera omnia, 10 vols [Leiden, 1703-6], VI, p. 503). J. B. Trapp's article on Grocyn in the ODNB casts doubt on Erasmus's claim that Grocyn questioned the authenticity of pseudo-Dionysius or that the lectures even took place.

The purpose of this section is threefold. One is to underscore the importance of Martin Luther (and consequently his doctrine of justification by faith; notice how Foxe begins this section with a little lecture on the insufficiency of works to obtain salvation) in the history of the Church. (It is worth remarking that it is Luther, not Wiclif, whom Foxe sees as the central figure in initiating the reform of the Anti-Christian Church). Secondly, it is a way to invoke the miraculous to support the Protestant cause. If, as Foxe is claiming here, the advent of Luther was prophesied and, if it was heralded by portents, than who could doubt that his teachings were God's word? The drawback was that, as with Foxe's collection of prophecies of the rise of Islam and of the Ottoman Empire, these prophecies were extra-Biblical and, while some of them came from what, to Foxe and his readers were reliable sources, such as Jan Hus, other came from people, such as Bridget of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, whom even Foxe was wary of crediting with the spirit of prophecy. A third purpose of this section was to underscore the corruption of the medieval Church. This was a relatively easy task, since many of these prophecies were contained in writings denouncing the pope and the clergy.

Most of the material in this section came from the basic works which Foxe relied on for his interpretation of Church history: John Bale's Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae…Catalogus (Basel, 1557) and Matthias Flacius's Catalogus testium veritatis (Basel, 1556). Foxe also drew on another work of Flacius: his two volume edition of the writings of Jan Hus: Ioannis Hus et Hieronymi Pragensis confessorum Christi historia et monimenta (Nuremburg, 1558).

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

The following extracts from the writings of Jan Hus are taken from the two volume compendium of Hus's works, edited by Mathias Flacius, Ioannis Hus et Hieronymi Pragensis confessorum Christi historia et monimenta (Nuremburg, 1558), I, fos. 71r-71v, 72v and 418.

The prophecy of Jerome of Prague is taken from the two volume compendium of the writings of Hus and Jerome, edited by Mathias Flacius, Ioannis Hus et Hieronymi Pragensis confessorum Christi historia et monimenta (Nuremberg, 1558), II, fo. 352v.

The story of John Hilton, including the citation of Philip Melanchthon, is taken from Mathias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis (Basel, 1562), p. 572.

Note Foxe's reluctance to appear to be giving too much credence to a Catholic saint and mystic.

Foxe had already quoted this passage earlier in his text: See Memoriale effigatum librorum prophetiarum seu visonum B. Brigidae (Rome, 1556), sig. S4v. For those using a different edition of St. Bridget's writings, it should be noted that Foxe's citation of the book and chapter are correct..

Again, Foxe is reluctant to credit the visions of a Catholic saint. But Foxe is also probably referencing the criticisms made of Catherine of Siena by Mathias Flacius, in his Catalogus testium veritatis, which is Foxe's source for her prophecy.

This prophecy (including the citation of St. Antoninus) is taken from Mathias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis (Basel, 1562), p. 523.

Matthew 10:26; Luke 12:2.

The prophecy of Theodoric is taken from Mathias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis (Basel, 1562), p. 541.

This prophecy comes Mathias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis (Basel, 1562), p. 562.

I.e., the great twelfth-century theologian, Peter Lombard.

The vision of Nicholas and the anecedote of Nicholas Medler are taken from Mathias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis (Basel, 1562), p. 571.

Mathias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis (Basel, 1562), pp. 583-4.

John Hacker was an extraordinarily influential Lollard with a long career; see J. A. F. Thomson, The Later Lollards, 1414-1520 for details. Hacker will be arrested in London in 1527 and in 1528, he would abjure and give the names of over 40 other Lollards to the authorities (1563, p. 418 and BL, Harley 421, fos. 11r-14r).

The stories of Alexander VI's death and of the statue of the angel struck by lightning are from Bale, Catalogus, p. 634

The portents in 1505 and 1516 come from John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae…Catalogus (Basel, 1557), pp. 645-6.

I.e., the Stauristichon of Giovanni Pico della Miarandola.

The references to all of these writers, including Pico della Mirandola, is from John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maioris Brytanniae…Catalogus (Basel, 1557), p. 646.

These anticlerical proverbs and quotations, down through the quotation from Becket, are all taken from Mathias Flacius, Catalogus testium veritatis (Basel, 1562), p. 564.

Foxe's meaning is obscured by his tortured syntax. What he is saying is that an annotation in a register attributed the work to William Thorpe, not that the register was attributed to Thorpe. In fact, Foxe is probably referring to the marginal note in Bishop Tunstall's register (Guildhall Library MS 9531/10, fo. 143v).

See Romans 3-4.

See 1583, pp. 527-43; 1576, pp. 511-27; 1570, pp. 629-49; 1563, pp. 143-72.

Foxe is quoting an anticlerical tract, A proper dyaloque betweene a gentillman and a husbandman, printed c. 1529 (STC 1462.3). It takes its popular name, the A.B.C., from the acrostic verses printed on its title page. These verses are printed by Foxe.

Ephesians 2:20-22.

1 Cor. 3:11.

The 'Ploughman's Tale' is not by Chaucer. It was an anonymous medieval work, possibly partly rewritten to increase its anti-papal slant, attributed to Chaucer and printed as part of 'The Canterbury Tales'.

This was one person, Giovanni Francisco Pico della Mirandola, the celebrated humanist.

I.e., Beatus Rhenanus, the German humanist and antiquarian. He initially favoured Luther, especially on the issues of indulgence and auricular confession, but he became disenchanted with his radical rejection of traditional theology.

Despite his occasional disagreements with Luther over theology, Foxe never lost sight of Luther's historical importance. And while Foxe insisted that there was a True Church before Luther and also that the way for Luther had been prepared by Erasmus and others, Foxe saw Luther's doctrine of justification by faith as a divinely inspired revelation. (The section introducing the life of Luther, describing prophecies of Luther's advent reveal Foxe's commitment to the concept of Luther as a divine agent). Far more than even Wiclif or Hus or Tyndale, Luther was, to Foxe, the most important figure in human history since the apostolic era.

Unsurprisingly then, Foxe devoted a great deal of space to Luther in every edition of the A&M. In 1563, the account of Luther's life through the Diet of Worms (1521) was taken from Henry Bennet's translation of Philip Melancthon's Historia de vita et actis…Martini Lutheri (cf. A famous and godly history, trans. H. Bennet [London, 1561], STC 1881, sigs. B5v-F8r with 1563, pp. 402-15). Foxe followed this translation closely, often on a word-for-word basis. The difficulty with Melanchthon's account is that it really was two separate histories, one of Luther's background and early life, and one of the Diet of Worms. The crucial years between, including the Liepzig disputation, were not covered in it.

In the 1570 edition, Foxe filled this gap with two additional sources. The most important of these, at least for the life of Luther, was an expanded version of Caspar Hedio's continuation of the chronicle attributed to Burchard of Ursburg (Caspar Hedio, Paralipomena rerum memorabilium [Basel, 1569]). This expanded edition contained not only Hedio's chronicle, but also his reprinting of Melanchthon's 'Epistola Lipsica disputatione', which supplied a detailed account of the Leipzig disputation. (Foxe's awareness of this text by 1570, is an indication of how closely he followed Continental scholarship. It is also important to note how much of Foxe's account of Luther came, directly or indirectly, from Melanchthon). For background, particularly the political situation, Foxe also relied on Sleidan's Commentaries and he drew slightly on Bale's Catalogus and Caspar Peucer's continuation of Carion's chronicle. The 1570 account of Luther was unaltered in subsequent editions.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

Johann von Staupitz (c. 1460-1525) was the vicar-general of the Observant Augustinians (Luther's order) and he was indeed a spiritual mentor to the young Luther. Staupitz emphasized election and justification in his theology. When the dispute over Indulgences first broke out, Staupitz supported Luther and tried to act as a mediator. Later, Staupitz, deplored Luther's extremism although the personal ties between the two men remained close.

In the 1570 edition Foxe amended these passages to remove the dangerous admissions (at least to sixteenth-century readers) that Luther was an innovator and that many of his mentors and colleagues deplored the schism that he created in the Church.

All of the passages which follow, on the pontificate of Leo X, down to the mention of Tetzel, are taken from John Bale, Catalogus (p. 645). This includes the citation of Christian Massaeus's chronicle, which Foxe is repeating from Bale.

At this point, Foxe resumes drawing on Henry Bennet's translation of Melanchthon's biographical sketch of Luther. He will do this down to the discussion of Frederick the Wise's conversation with Erasmus about Luther (see A famous and godly history, trans. Henry Bennet (London, 1561), sigs. C1r-C3r).

I.e., Johann Tetzel, a Dominican whose extravagant claims for the salvific power of indulgences, provoked Luther into his confrontation with the Church.

Foxe (repeating Melanchthon) is denying the charge that Luther attacked the selling of indulgences at the behest of Frederick the Wise, the duke of Saxony. In fact, Melanchthon and Foxe declare (correctly) that Frederick was alarmed by the controversy.

Unquestionably Frederick the Wise's staunch support for Luther saved Luther numerous times, particularly in the early stages of the Indulgence controversy, later when Luther was summoned to Rome and still later after the Diet of Worms. Frederick was a wealthy and powerful prince and (crucial to Luther's safety) the Habsburgs owed Frederick large sums of money.

This whole account of Erasmus's opinion of Luther is taken from Caspar Peucer, Chronicon Carionis (Wittenberg, 1580), p. 705 and Caspar Hedio, Paralipomena rerum memorabilium (Strausburg, 1569), pp. 447-8. Foxe is including this to emphasize Erasmus's support for the Reformation and to reduce the well-known disagreements between Luther and Erasmus to the level of personality clashes.

This is an important statement of Foxe's belief that Erasmus, Valla and others prepared the way for Luther, but also of Foxe's profound appreciation of the seminal importance of justification by faith alone.

From here on down to the Leipzig debate, Foxe is drawing on, and synthesizing, Caspar Hedio's chronicle and Johannes Sleidan's Commentaries. (See Caspar Hedio, Paralipomena rerum memorabilium [Strassburg, 1559], pp. 447-50 and Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries [London, 1560], STC 19848, sigs. 1v-10r).

Psalm 24:1.

This is Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt (c. 1480-1541); often known as Carlstadt. He became a leading and extreme Lutheran, eventually falling out with Luther himself. But in 1518, he was an important and outspoken ally of Luther's.

The first sentence, on Luther's life before he attended the University of Erfurt, is based on A famous and godly history, trans. H. Bennet (London, 1561), sigs. B2r-B3r. Foxe's lack of interest in the details of Luther's childhood and his parents (of Melancthon provides a detailed account), is in marked contrast to modern scholars, particularly Eric Erikson.

I.e., Ascoli.

The fear was that if Luther went to Rome, he would be tried and executed for heresy there. Therefore Frederick the Wise, the duke of Saxony, and other supporters of Luther insisted that the examination of Luther be held in Germany. Fortunately for Luther, the successor to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian was being determined. Forreasons having to do with the balance of power in the Italian peninsula, the papacy was anxious to stop Maximilian's nephew Charles from succeeding him. Thus the papacy was concerned not to offend Frederick and agreed to Luther's examination in Augsburg where Cardinal Cajetan, the papal legate to the Empire, was residing.

An extravagant is a name given to certain papal decretals. A decretal is a papal letter, generally answering a disputed question, which has been incorporated into canon law.

I.e., the followers of Thomas Aquinas, the great Scholastic theologian.

The citation of Aesop is Foxe's insertion. The reference is to a fable of Aesop's, in which a dog, holding a bone in his mouth, sees his reflection in the water. He thinks it is another dog, with another bone, and greedily lunges for it. As a result he loses the bone he already had.

This is Foxe's pun: 'Leo' is Latin for lion.

Which effectively knocked the ball into the long grass. At this point in time, the pope had no intention of summoning a general Council of the Church, which, he feared would challenge papal authority as the Councils of Constance and Basel did.

This was an award conferred by the papacy and considered to be a high honour.

It was feared that if Luther went to Rome, he would be tried and executed for heresy there so Frederick the Wise and other supporters of Luther insisted that the examination of Luther be held in Germany. This was accepted by the papacy because they did not wish Maximilian's nephew, Charles, to succeed Maximilian and hence they could not offend Frederick and risk Frederick voting for Charles as the next Emperor. However, once Charles V had been elected Holy Roman Emperor, papal proceedings resumed against Luther because the papacy now had no particular reason to conciliate Frederick the Wise. Additionally, Charles V was greatly concerned about the spread of heresy in his domains and worked to support the papacy.

Foxe now turns to the Leipzig disputation which, contrary to what Foxe states here occurred after the death of Emperor Maximilian. He bases his entire narrative of the debate on Melanchthon's account, as printed in Caspar Hedio, Paralipomena rerum memorabilium (Strassburg, 1559), pp. 450-3.

I.e., Eisleben.

The disputation was held in the University of Leipzig.

Johann Eck was a priest, not a friar, and he was a doctor of theology at the University of Ingolstadt. He was the most prominent anti-Protestant theologian of his generation and spearheaded the early attacks on Luther.

This is Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt, often known as Carlstadt. He became a leading and extreme Lutheran, eventually falling out with Luther himself. But in 1518, he was an important and outspoken ally of Luther's.

As the papacy was, at the time, unwilling to move against Luther, Eck tried to force the issue by confronting the Protestants in print and challenging them to public debate. After a series of attacks on Carlstadt, Eck succeeded in drawing Luther into a debate on the issue of papal primacy. Carlstadt and Luther agreed to debate Eck at Leipzig.

Actually two notaries kept records of the disputation.

Matthew 16:18. This considered by Catholics to provide scriptural authority for claims of papal primacy.

John 21:16-17.

John 20: 22-23.

Eck's strategy was to brand Luther as a heretic and a Hussite (i.e. 'one of the Bohemians' faction').

Galatians 2:6.

All of the material from here down to the accession of Leo X, is drawn from A famous and godly history, trans. H. Bennet (London, 1561), STC 1881, sigs. B5v-C1r.

2 Mac. 12: 43-5.

1 Corinthians 3:15.

Matthew 5: 25.

Psalm 66: 12.

Both sides gained something from the Leipzig diputation. Eck succeeded in branding Luther as a heretic to many religious conservatives and convinced Rome (and Charles V) that Luther was a dangerous threat. But Luther's insistence on scripture as the sole authority for doctrine and his challenging papal primacy won him a great deal of support.

The efforts to ascertain that Luther preceded Zwingli comes from Foxe. Otherwise, this description of the rise of Zwingli is taken from Johannes Sleidan, A famous cronicle of our time, called sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19848, fo. 17r.

The account of the condemnation of Luther's On Christian Liberty, is taken from Caspar Hedio, Paralipomena rerum memorabilium (Strassburg, 1569), pp. 454-55.

This account of events leading up to the Diet of Worms is taken from Sleidan's Commentaries. See Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of oure time, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19848, fos. 24r-31r.

The burning of the papal bull was a decisive break with the Church. Luther was now subject to punishment from the emperor.

Luther was only summoned to be given an opportunity to retract his heresies and this concession was only obtained - over the objections of the papal legate and the reservations of Charles V - through the intervention of Frederick the Wise.

The claim that this elderly man was the noted theologian John of Wesel, is Foxe's baseless speculation. In fact, John died in 1481, two years before Luther was born.

Jan Hus had been burned even though he had been granted an imperial safe-conduct to and from the Council of Constance. Charles V had to guarantee Luther's safety in the strongest terms, in order to assuage the fears of Luther's supporters.

The entire account of Luther at the Diet of Worms is reprinted from A famous and godly history, trans. Henry Bennet (London, 1561), STC 1881, sigs. D5r-F8r.

I.e., 16 April 1521.

The headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller, who at that time were based on the island of Rhodes.

Jan Hus had been burned even though he had been granted an imperial safe-conduct to and from the Council of Constance. Charles V had to guarantee Luther's safety in the strongest terms, in order to assuage the fears of Luther's supporters.

I.e., in German.

Jerome Schurffe was advising and representing Luther.

See Matthew 10:28.

Matthew 10: 19.

Luther is citing sections of canon law here against Eck's arguments for papal primacy.

This is all that Foxe has on Luther's becoming an Augustinian friar and his zeal in trying to live the monastic life, which are covered in some detail by Melanchthon. These details were probably somewhat distasteful to Foxe.

John 18: 23

Matthew 10: 34.

It should be remembered that Luther's books had already been found heretical by the Church. He was summoned to Worms to be given a chance to recant, not to defend his views.

Eck began to respond to, or answer, Luther.

Charles V was king of Spain and had Spanish servants and courtiers in his retinue.

These are references to Psalm 91: 5-6.

1 Thess. 5: 21.

Galatians 1: 8.

Foxe added the words 'but modestly' to this narrative, in the 1570 edition.

Psalm 146: 3.

By 'sententiaries', Foxe is refering to scholastic theologians who wrote commentaries on Peter Lombard's Sentences. Gabriel Biel (c. 1420-95) and Pierre d'Ailly (1350-1420) were both strong influences on Luther and both nominalists. Pierre d'Ailly was bishop of Cambrai ('Cameracensis' in Latin).

Jeremiah 17: 5.

Acts 5: 38-39.

Luther had twenty-one days to reurn home. During that time he was protected by the Imperial safe conduct; after that period he was at the mercy of the local authorities.

Foxe's account of all the events below, down to and including Henry VIII's attack on Luther, is drawn from Sleidan's Commentaries. (See Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, translated John Daus [London, 1560], STC 19848, fos. 31v-34v.

The assertion that someone other than Henry VIII wrote the book is Foxe's addition and it is a reference to the rumours that Thomas More was the work's real author.

Luther showed a marked preference for nominalist theologians, such as William of Ockham, over realist theologians such as Aquinas and Scotus. The realists insisted on the actual existence of metaphysical universals, the nominalists were denied their existence. Nominalists tended to a certain scepticism about transubstantiation.

In the 1563 edition, Foxe printed a selection of the 100 articles presented by the German princes at Nuremberg in 1522, listing their grievances against the papacy. These articles were culled from the full list of grievances printed in Ortwin Gratius, Fasciculus rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum (Cologne, 1535), fos. 177v-187r. Ortwin Gratius (or van Graes) was a German humanist and he edited the Fasciculum, a collection of documents relating to later medieval church history. Gratius ardently sought reform of clerical abuses and he believed that this could not be done by a corrupt papacy but only through general Councils. His collection was intended to provide historical examples of conciliar authority and clerical corruption and was thus very useful to Foxe, despite Gratius's detestation of Protestantism.

In fact, the section of the Acts and Monuments devoted to the pontificate of Adrian VI, is based almost entirely on documents reprinted from the Fasciculus, with background detail excerpted from John Bale's Catalogus, Caspar Hedio's continuation of the chronicle attributed to Burchard of Ursburg and Johannes Sleidan's Commentaries. The purpose of this section is unmistakeable: to demonstrate the economic and moral abuses of the Catholic church.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

This is a reference to Luther's publicly burning a papal bull, which rejected his doctrines, together with a copy of the canon law, at Wittenberg on 10 December 1520.

I.e., to seize and carry off.

This is an excellent example of Catholics arguing that Protestantism was socially and politically subversive. (And of course, remember that Adrian is writing to the German princes. Note also Foxe's concern in his marginal notes to refute this charge.)

See Numbers 16: 1-35.

See Acts 5:1-4.

This letter is accurately and completely translated from Ortwin Gratius, Fasciculum rerum expetendarum ac fiugiendarum (Cologne, 1535), fos. 172r-173r. It should be pointed out, however, that Gratius approves of the letter and its instructions; Foxe, as he makes very clear, does not.

Jeremiah 48:10.

This is another tactic of Catholic controversialists: to accuse Protestantism of catering to human carnality, particularly in the denial of clerical celibacy.

1 Timothy 5: 11-12.

This is a reference to the edict of Charles V, issued just after the Diet of Worms, in 1521, ordering Luther's arrest and banning his books and teachings.

The account of Leo X's death, and some of the information about Adrian VI is drawn from John Bale, Scriptorum Illustrium maiorum Brytanniae Catalogus (Basel, 1557), pp. 637-8. Bale misdates the pestilence and the loss of Rhodes, however, to the pontificate of Leo X. Foxe corrects this, and gets his additional information on Adrian, with the aid of Capar Hedio, Paraleipomena rerum memorabilum ( Basel, 1569), p. 460.

Luther had been excommunicated at Rome before the Diet of Worms.

There is a misquotation, perhaps of Isaiah 49.

Adrian VI was well aware that clerical corruption, particularly at Rome, encouraged Lutheranism. He was resolved to weed it out, but his pontificate was too brief for him to accomplish his goals.

This is a paraphrase of Proverbs 30: 33.

This is a reference to the grievances of the German princes submitted to the pope in 1522. The 'Rota' was the papal chancery, which, inter alia, received petitions.

The subsidy was from the German princes to aid the Hungarians in their struggle with the Turks.

This letter is completely and accurately translated from Ortwin Gratius, Fasciculum rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum (Cologne, 1535), fos. 173v-175r. Essentially the German princes used the occasion to press their own demands on the papacy, although they did promise to limit the dissemination of Lutheran teachings (through books, cheap print and books) within the Empire.

Ferdinand was the younger brother of Charles V, ruler of the hereditary Hapsburg territories in Austria and central Europe. He acted as his brother's regent in the Holy Roman Empire.

I.e., to the Knights of St. John whose headquarters on Rhodes was under attack from the Turks.

The information on the dispute in Strausburg and Luther's reactions to the laws enacted by the princes at the Diet of Nuremburg are taken from Johannes Sleidan, A famiuse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19848, fos. 39v-45r.

Foxe's description of Adrian VI's letter to the German is the martyrologist's own editorial comment. The layout of the page in the original editions is particularly significant at this point since the caustic marginal notes are actually embedded in the text.

This is a sharply abridged translation of the document printed in Ortwin Gratius, Fasciculus rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum (Cologne, 1535), fos. 177v-187v. Foxe only retained the complaints which were relevant to the English situation or touched on core theological issues.

This complaint was not included in the 1563 edition, probably because it had little relevance to the English situation. It was added to the 1570 edition, possibly because it added background to the initial reason for Luther's opposition to the papacy.

Foxe drew this brief narrative of what happened after the complaints were presented to the papal legate at the Diet of Nuremburg (1522) and of Cardinal Campeggio's legation to Germany from Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19848, fos. 45r-46v.

This is an accurate and complete translation of Adrian VI's letter as it appears in Ortwin Gratius, Fasciculum rerum expetendarum ac fugiendarum (Cologne, 1535), fos. 171r-172r. But Foxe undermines the letter - of which Gratius approves - through his sardonic marginal notes, which are not from the Fasciculum.

1 Cor. 11:19.

This is an allusion to 1 Peter 5:8.

Adrian VI was born in Utrecht, but before becoming pope, he had been bishop of Tortosa and inquisitor for Aragon and Navarre.

I.e., Luther, who had been an Observant Augustinian.

I.e., to hold in contempt

In the 1563 edition, the conclusion of Foxe's account of Luther can be divided into three parts. The first is an account of Luther's death, translated from Melanchthon's funeral sermon, as translated by Henry Bennet (see A famous and godly history contayning the lyves a[nd] actes of three renowned reformers…, trans. Henry Bennet (London, 1561), STC 1881, sigs. F8v-G1r). The second was a long account of the pontificate of Leo X translated from Bale's Catalogus. And the third part is a brief summary, of Foxe's composition, on the increasing papal corruption of the Church during the Middle Ages and praising Luther for bringing light into the depths of this darkness.In the 1570 edition, the second and third parts of this initial account were dropped. Material from Sleidan's Commentaries and Caspar Hedio's continuation of Burchard of Ursburg's chronicle was added to the account to provide a narrative of Luthers's dispute with Karlstadt on iconoclasm and Luther's dispute with Zwingli over the Eucharist. Since Foxe sided with Luther on neither issue, he distanced himself from the Reformer, warning readers that Luther's opinion and example were not to be slavishly followed, such as his opposition to iconoclasm (Foxe endorsed iconoclasm). But Foxe also made clear his very considerable admiration for Luther, based especially on his regard for Luther as a spiritual physician to troubled souls, on Luther's courage in defying the papacy and for being the first person to articulate a theology of justification by faith. By the end of the account, Foxe despite his theological differences with Luther, ends up crediting him with quasi-miraculous powers.

Thomas S. Freeman
University of Sheffield

I.e., the Lutherans, who were from the duchy of Saxony.

Now Foxe is advising English Protestants not to disown Luther because they did not share the same theology of the Eucharist.

This section is a very interesting attempt by Foxe to grapple with one of the major challenges to Protestant martyrology: why miracles did not occur to support the sanctity of Protestant martyrs? And how could Luther be regarded as a divinely inspired teacher when he did not buttress his message with miracles? Foxe explains this by describing the 'miracles' performed by Luther.

We have been unable to find the source for the stories of of these two interesting 'miraculous' escapes of Luther from death. Foxe may have heard them from an oral source; perhaps a sermon.

This is taken from Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19894, sig. G8v.

Who these 'learned' sources were cannot be determined. There were numerous stories current in the sixteenth century of Luther's successful confrontations with the devil; this appears to be one of them. (Luther's inveterate adversary and first biographer, Johannes Cochlaeus, caustically referred to the prevalence of such stories: Historia de actis et scriptis Martini Lutheri (Paris, 1565), pp. 302-3). For a discussion of the contemporary legends of Luther and Satan see Robert Scribner, 'Luther Myth: Historiography of the Reformers' in Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Germany (London, 1987), pp. 301-22, esp. 304-5.

See Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19894, sigs. G8v-H1r.

This is taken from A famous and godly history contayning the lyves a[nd] actes of three renowned reformers…, trans. Henry Bennet (London, 1561),STC 1881, sigs. F8v-G1r. For a modern translation of Melanchthon's life of Luther, see Elizabeth Vandiver, Ralph Keen and Thomas D. Frazel, Luther's Lives (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), pp. 14-39.

This is taken from A famous and godly history contayning the lyves a[nd] actes of three renowned reformers…, trans. Henry Bennet (London, 1561), sigs. G1r-G2r.

I.e., the banning of Luther's works and the order for his arrest (after his safe conduct had expired) issued by Charles V at the Diet of Worms.

Frederick the Wise's death is from Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19848, fo. 56r.

This account of the pontificate of Leo X is translated from John Bale's Catalogus, pp. 636-8 and 644-6.

The account of Cardinal Campeggio and of the disputes of Strasbourg is taken from Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19848, fo. 48r-v.

The second diet of Nuremberg is not discussed in Foxe, he is merely carelessly repeating Sleidan's reference to his previous discussion of the diet.

This is the Colloquy of Regensburg (Ratisbon) in 1524. Foxe uses John Daus's translation of Sleidan's Commentaries. (See Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus [London, 1560], STC 19848, fos. 49v-50r).

The account of Luther's quarrel with Carlstadt over images is drawn from Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19848, fos. 35v-36r and 45r-v.

Andreas Bodenstein von Carlstadt (c. 1480-1541), often known simply as Carlstadt, became a leading and extreme Lutheran. In 1518, he had been an important and outspoken ally of Luther's but Carlstadt eventually fell out with him.

Foxe's knowledge of Adrian VI's letters comes from Sleidan's Commentaries (see A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), STC 19848, fo. 37r-v) but it is Foxe who shrewdly guesses that they caused Luther to prohibit Carlstadt's iconoclasm.

In the following paragraphs, Foxe, who staunchly endorsed iconoclasm, is trying to explain away Luther's opposition to iconoclasm as tactical and also not a precedent to be followed in England.

Here Foxe is defending Luther against the numerous godly in England who rejected key parts of Lutheran theology (notably on the Eucharist), by praising Luther as a great physician of souls.

Foxe based this account of the Colloquy of Marburg on Caspar Hedio, Paralipomoena rerum memorabilium (Strasbourg, 1538), pp. 472-3 and Johannes Sleidan, A famouse cronicle of our time, called Sleidanes Commentaries, trans. John Daus (London, 1560), pp. 472-3. It should be observed that Foxe is going out of chronological order in his narrative, as the Colloquy of Marburg was held in 1529.

In fact, in 14 of the 15 articles drawn up by Luther before the Colloquy (and listed by Foxe), the Lutheran and Swiss Reformers agreed. But the Swiss refused to accept the doctrine of the Eucharist contained in article 15. Foxe is de-emphasizing the disagreement in response to a blistering attack by Nicholas Harpsfield, who argued that Lutherans, Zwinglians and Calinists were not of the same religion because they did not share the same beliefs on the key doctrine of the Eucharist (Harpsfield, Dialogi sex, pp. 802-17 and 822-25).

Foxe begins his account of the Swiss Reformation with a brief history of the Swiss Confederation, emphasising how 'first they recouered their libertie, and after were ioyned in league together'. His principal source here was Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia universalis, book 3 (in the 1552 Basel edition, pp. 360 et seq). The cantons or 'pagi' ('pagus' in Latin = village) are enumerated. Foxe mentions the first confederation (Urani=Uri; Vntervaldij=Unterwalden; Suicenses=Schwyz), its subsequent enlargement ( including Lucernates=Lucerne; Tigurini=Zurich; Bernatus=Berne; Glareanti=Glarus; Apencellenses=Appenzell; Basilienses=Basel; Solodurij=Solothurn) and then those who joined later (Sangalli=St-Gall; Mullusiani=Mulhouse, etc). From this same source also came Foxe's passage on William Tell (p. 361), a myth which had already acquired iconic status through the verse drama, the Urner Tellspiel (c.1512; published 1530s) and Aegidius Tschudi's Chronicon Helveticum, which Foxe mentions in the margin. He may have become acquainted with its existence, or even have read it, whilst he was in Basel (for it was not published in the sixteenth century). For the myth, see R. C. Head, 'William Tell and his Comrades: Association and Fraternity in the Propaganda of Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Switzerland' The Journal of Modern History 67, no. 3 (1995), 527-77. It was equally from the Cosmographia that Foxe recounts the history of the war between Frederick, duke of Austria and Ludovic, duke of Bavaria and the counsel of the fool, Kune de Stocken (p. 363).

This was scene-setting, however, for the important section to follow on 'The actes and life of Zwinglius'. Foxe accords almost ten pages to the Zwinglian reformation - a clear sign of how much significance he attached to it. The details of his early life were abstracted mainly from the biography, compiled by Oswald Myconius in 'De D. Hvldrichi Zwinglii […] vita et obitv', and composed the year after Zwingli's death in 1532. It had been published as a preface to the edition of Johann Oecolampadius' letters, Epistolarum libri quatuor (Basel [Basileae]: Thomas Platter and Balthasar Lasius, 1536), which provided Foxe with a considerable insight into the networks of scholarly communication that linked the Rhineland Biblicists in the upper Rhineland quadrant (Basel, Constance, Berne, Zurich, etc). For the evolution of the reformation in these cities, however, Foxe turned to the Commentaries of Johann Sleidan, the protestant historian whose work Foxe helped to promote in England through the martyrology (De Statv religionis et reipvblicae carolo qvinto Caesare Commentarii. Photographic reproduction of the edition of 1785-6, edited by J. Gottlieb ed 3 vols (Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1968). The material on the first Zurich Disputations of January 1523, the Constitutions of the Council of Lucerne in 1524, and the energetic defence of the progress of the reformation in Zurich by its magistrates in 1524 and early 1525 all came from Sleidan, books 3 and 4. Equally, for the early events surrounding the reformation in Berne, including the Disputations of December 1527 and January 1528, Foxe also drew on Sleidan, book 6. The same source served for his history of the reformations in Strasbourg and Basel. Towards the end of the account, Foxe indicated how he had supplemented his use of Sleidan with Oecolampadius' letters. For the background to the Second Kappel War, and Zwingli's reasons for personal engagement in it, Foxe felt he had to go beyond the impersonal history of Sleidan, returning to Zwingli's letter to the ministers at Ulm, Martinus Freschius and Cunhardus Somius, which he had found in the preface to J. Oecolampadius, Epistolarum libri quatuor (Basel [Basileae]: Thomas Platter and Balthasar Lasius, 1536), fol 211v-212, dated 8 November 1530, in which Zwingli vigorously defended himself against his critics, both inside the canton of Zurich and from without. On the fate of Zwingli's body after his death, Foxe cited a further letter from Oecolampadius, this time to Wolfgang Capiton of 22 October 1531 (fols 172v-173). We should note Foxe's lavish praise for Oecolampadius' Commentaries on the Prophets (J. Oecolampadius, In Iesaiam Prophetam hypomnematôn, hoc est commentariorum, Iannis Oecolampadii libri sex [...] ([Geneva]: Jean Crespin, 1568 [1567?]) which, 'with other worth workes, which he left behinde him, liue still, and shall never die'. They carried a laudatory preface from Heinrich Bullinger, and were remarkable as setting a new standard in the methodology and organization of Biblical commentaries. Towards the end of the section, Foxe translated a letter from Zwingli in which the reformer represented views on Christ's descent into Hell which he had already expounded in the mid 1520s in response to the interpretation of the 'catabaptists' concerning Christ's resurrection in the light of their arguments about the sleep of the soul and the final resurrection - see Huldrych Zwinglis Brief edited Oskar Farner. 2 vols (Zurich, 1918-20), 2, pp. 000-000.

Mark Greengrass
University of Sheffield

In its first edition, Foxe's martyrology had been published alongside that of Heinrich Pantaleon, a second volume ('Pars Secunda') to which Foxe's was the first. Albeit published in London and Basel respectively, they appeared by what must have been by prior arrangement on the same day. Between them lay an implied division of labour, with Foxe concentrating on the 'Acts and Monuments' of the English martyrs, whilst Pantaleon offered a broader 'European' perspective ('per Europam persecvtionvm' ran his title) with the witnesses of the martyrs divided up by nationalities and political entities ('per Regna & Nationes distributarum'). The two parts of the martyrology had, however, overlapped even in 1563. Foxe took the opportunity even then to integrate some martyr narratives from continental Europe into the first edition, especially where their narratives were readily available to him, or had become particularly well-known. He did so for a particular and important reason. If, as Tertullian had famously said, 'in the blood of martyrs lay the seed of the true church', it was important to Foxe's purpose to demonstrate that martyrdoms had occurred in the immediate aftermath of Luther's reformation. So Foxe included five such stories relating to Germany in the 1520s in his 1563 edition. Rather than incorporate them into his table of German martyrs in 1570, he deliberately kept them apart from it in order to emphasise that important point:-

In the case of the 'account of 'Henry Voz & Iohn Esch frier Augustines' [Hendrich Voes; Jan van Essen] (1563, pp. 421-2) he based his account (indirectly) on an undated and anonymous short pamphlet, published shortly after their martyrdom and reissued in various different editions, one of which was ascribed to Martin Luther himself (F. van der Haeghen, T. J. I. Arnold, and R. Vanden Berghe, Bibliographie des martyrologes protestants néerlandais 2 vols (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1890), 1, p. 473 et seq.). Crespin had provided a short summary of it in the earliest edition of his martyrology, but Foxe did not use that as his source (Crespin/Benoit, 1, pp. 238-40). Pantaleon provided a further summary, basing his account, however, on the same source (Pantaleon, pp. 38-9). Both Foxe and Pantaleon give their source as 'Ex 6 tomo M. Lutheri, fol. 397'. This does not, however, correspond to the relevant volume of the collected works of Luther, edited by Philip Melanchthon (M. Luther, Tomus primus [-septimus] omnium operum Reverendi Domini Martini Lutheri [...] 7 vols (Wiitenberg: Iohannes Lufft, 1545, etc). It is possible that both Pantaleon and Foxe had used another edition of Luther's works, or that they had both copied the reference from somewhere else.

In the narrative of the martyrdom of Henry Zutphen [Heinrich Mullers van Zutphen], recounted in the 1563 edition (pp. 422-428), Foxe was once again relying on a martyr account which had been widely diffused in the form of a contemporary pamphlet, and published in Latin (1524) and German (1525) - see F. van der Haeghen, T. J. I. Arnold, and R. Vanden Berghe, Bibliographie des martyrologes protestants néerlandais 2 vols (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1890), 1, p. 541 et seq. As Foxe said, the story had already been told, at least in outline, in Sleidan (book 4) and the earliest edition of Crespin (1554) - see Crespin/Benoit, 1, pp. 245-247. He clearly knew, and had probably read, Luther's own account of it, partly through a consolatory letter to the faithful of Bremen, and which had appeared in the earliest published collection of Luther's letters in 1525 (M. Luther, Martini Lutheri Epistolarum farrago, pietatis et eruditionis plena [...] [Haganoae [Haganau]: Iohan Secer, 1525]) - see W. M. L. de Wette, ed. Martin Luther. Briefe, Sendschreiben und Bedenken 5 vols (Berlin, 1825-1828), 3, p. 65 etc. Although Foxe also referred the reader to Ludwig Rabus' martyrology (L. Rabus, Historien der Heyligen auserwölten Gottes Zeugen 3 vols [Strasbourg, 1554-1558], there is no sign that he ever consulted it himself, or had the language skills to read it directly. Pantaleon had provided a similar narrative of this martyrdom (Pantaleon, pp. 35-8).

The account of the martyrdom of 'Iohn Castellane' (Jean Chastelain), which Foxe published in the earliest edition of his martyrology (1563, pp. 428-431) seems to have come from that published in the earliest edition of Crespin (1554, fol. 175), which Foxe follows very closely here. Chastelain was a native of Tournai who went to Lorraine and actively proselytized at Bar-le-Duc ('Barleduc'), Vitry in Partois ('Vittery in Partoise'), Chalon and Vic ('Vike') before being arrested and imprisoned at Goze ('Gorze') and the castle at Nomény ('Nommeny'). Pantaleon provided a similar narrative in his edition too (Pantaleon, pp. 40-42), deriving it from the same source.

The 'history of a good pastoure, murthered for the preaching of the Gospel, wrytten by Ihon Oecolampadius' which followed in his earliest edition (1563, pp. 431-432) was also taken directly from the earliest edition of Crespin (Crespin [1554], fol. 154). Crespin ascribed it (and Foxe follows him) to a written narrative prepared by Johann Oecolampadius, the preacher in Basel. Pantaleon had also provided a version of the same narrative (Pantaleon, pp. 46-8). See Crespin/Benoit, 1, pp. 250-1.

The same is also true of the following 'history of the death of a certaine minister which was drowned in the yeare of our Lord 1525. collected by Oecolampadius', reproduced in the earliest edition of Crespin (Crespin [1554], fol 158) and repeated by Foxe in his earliest edition (1563, pp. 432-3). In 1563, Foxe knew only that he was a minister in the Breisgau ('Brisgois'). However, when he came to repeat the narrative in 1570, he added the pastor's name - Peter Spengler - which he had found in Pantaleon's account of the same narrative (Pantaleon, pp. 48-51). Living in Basel, Pantaleon doubtless had access to written and oral sources which were able to substantiate some of the details of the Oecolampadius narrative.

The following account of a 'history of a certen man of the Country wrongfully put to deathe Collected by the saide Ihon Oecolampadius' was also published by Foxe in his earliest edition (1563, pp. 433-5). It was the closest he came to engaging the attention of his readers in the link between the early protestant reformation and social conflict - the reference-point for the narrative being the Peasants' War in Germany, which had taken early and divisive root in south-west Germany, the region to which it relates. It had been published by Crespin in his earliest edition (Crespin [1554], fol. 166) and in Pantaleon (pp. 51-54).

The next account of Wolfgang Schuch, a protestant pastor from Alsace ('Lotharing.') had first appeared in Ludwig Rabus' Historien der Märtyrer (Strasbourg, 1554). It was repeated in Crespin (1560) and Pantaleon, pp. 54-57. Foxe's account here was closely based on the latter, which explains why it appeared for the first time in the 1570 edition of Foxe's martyrology.The following narrative of the death of Johann Hüglein in Merssburg (near Constance) in 1527 had already been widely circulated in the reformation. A contemporary narrative of his trial and death had been published in Nuremberg in c.1527. It is from that, either directly or indirectly, that Sleidan derived his account (Sleidan [book 6], 1, p. 331), and a brief account of his death had also been included in Rabus, vol 6, p. 599 and Pantaleon, p. 60. Foxe seems to have consulted both Sleidan and Pantaleon for his details of it and it appeared for the first time only in the 1570 edition of Foxe's martyrology.

The next account was also of an early martyrdom from Bavaria. Georg Carpenter was a native of Emmendingen ('Emeryng') in Bavaria. He was burnt at Munich ('Munchen') on 8 February 1527. The account, with its circumstantiated details of his trial (including the debate with Conrad Schritter ['Scheitter'], the vicar of the cathedral church in Munich), had appeared for the first time in Crespin [1556], but Foxe acquired all his details of it from Pantaleon, pp. 61-3, and it appeared for the first time only in the 1570 edition of Foxe's martyrology.

For the account of the martyrdom of Leonard Kayser, who may well have held Anabaptist beliefs, a contemporary pamphlet had provided the relevant details, published in Wittemberg in 1527. It was upon this account, either directly or indirectly, that the narrative of his martyrdom reached Pantaleon (pp. 63-4) which is where Foxe derived his own account. It appeared for the first time only in the 1570 edition of Foxe's martyrology.

For the subsequent history of the martyrdom of Wendelmoet Claes [var: Classen], Foxe followed Crespin, Haemstede, Rabus and Pantaleon, deriving his account from the latter (p. 65). She was a native of Monnitendam ('Munchendam'), a small town in Holland. It is now evident, although it was perhaps difficult to discern this at the time, that she was a convinced Anabaptist. It appeared for the first time only in the 1570 edition of Foxe's martyrology.

The final account from the first decade of the reformation concerned two martyrs from Cologne, Peter Fliested and Adolf Clarenbach, in September 1529. Foxe might have acquired the material here from Sleidan, but he more likely derived it from the account in Pantaleon, pp. 66-7. It appeared only for the first time in the 1570 edition of Foxe's martyrology.

Mark Greengrass
University of Sheffield

This was the first of an elaborate series of tables, indicative of Foxe's strong preference (inherited from Matthias Flacius Illyricus and John Bale) for tabulating and 'cataloguing' material in a systematic and taxonomic fashion. These pages required considerable sophistication of his printer since they are elaborately ruled and divided into columns and rows that embrace woodcut engravings, allow room for marginal glosses and include catch-words. The table, introduced in the 1570 edition of the martyrology for the first time, enabled Foxe to broaden the chronological scope of the initial accounts which he had included in 1563. Although Foxe occasionally mentions the martyrologies of Adriaen van Haemstede and Ludwig Rabus, there is no evidence that he consulted either of them directly. Almost all the material was derived from Pantaleon (see the individual biographical entries for precise details), occasionally Sleidan and the Latin edition of Crespin.

The table interspersed some materials about the political history of Germany in the later 1540s, without intending to be a detailed history of it. So Foxe included a brief excursus on the failure of the Augsburg ('Augusta')'Interim', the forlorn attempt concluded on 15 May 1548 to negotiate a 'concord' between the major contending faiths in Germany. Foxe had clearly absorbed enough during his time in Basel to pour scorn on 'a new forme of Religion called Interim' with its attempts to 'make a hodgebotch of them both' (1583, p. 892). That became an increasingly common view, especially in Reformed circles, after the peace of Augsburg (1555), which formally excluded Reformed (Zwinglian/Calvinist) confessions from being incorporated within the peace. Foxe's source for the early failure of the Imperial siege of Constance, one of the few protestant successes of the Schmalkaldic War, was Sleidan (book 21), 3, 139-40. For the flight of various protestant ministers from southern Germany during the war, where Foxe singles out Martin Frecht ('Martinus Frechtus'), superintendant at Ulm, Wolfgang Musculus at Augsburg, Johannes Brenz ('Brentius') from Halle, Ambrose Blaurer ('Blaurerus') from Contance and Martin Bucer from Strasbourg, his source of information was also Sleidan (book 20), 3, pp. 139-140. His presentation of Johann Friedrich ('John Fridericke'), Elector of Saxony as among the 'godly and constant Sayntes of Christ' for his 'admirable constancy' in the aftermath of his defeat and capture by the emperor in 1547 also largely glosses the account given in Sleidan (book 19), 3, pp. 13-19 et seq. Foxe reinforced the case for an honourable mention of the protestant princes who had so disastrously engaged in the Schmalkaldic War by including Philip, Landgrave of Hesse as another 'godly and constant' saint, especially during his five-year captivity in Spain. Again, Foxe's source was Sleidan (book 19), 3, pp. 28-34. At the same time, Foxe could not resist a paragraph being devoted to the interesting reform-minded Archbishop of Cologne whose attempts to reform his own archdiocese were among several examples of those figures in the catholic authority who took an independent and conciliatory line towards protestant critique. Sleidan had reported on them briefly (Sleidan [book 15], 2, p. 309) but as the background to his summary removal from office in the different climate of 1548 and replacement by Adolf von Schauenburg (Sleidan [book 18], 2, p. 575). Foxe might well have liked to have dwelt longer, however, on the stubborn resistance to siege by imperial forces of the 'Christian city of Magdeburg' and the 'constancy of their doctrine reformed' in 1552. It marked a turning-point in German protestant fortunes in their conflict with the emperor. Once more, Foxe's source was Sleidan (book 23), 3, pp. 302-4.

Foxe pursued the narratives of martyrdom as conscientiously as his sources allowed. He turned initially to Sleidan. The imprisonment, and eventual release, of a woman in Augsburg for questioning a priest who carried a lighted candle to the bedside of an individual who was close to death in 1552 he had diligently found there (Sleidan [book 22], 3, pp. 214-5). Equally, stretching the embrace of those who 'suffered' for the faith to include those who were deprived of their livings, he found a place for Johannes Frisius, abbot of Neustadt, deprived in 1554 of his clerical positions. In the same vein, Foxe included the exile of around 200 suspect ministers (actually somewhat under that number) from Bohemia, to which Sleidan had alluded (Sleidanus [book 25], 3, p. 488).

This tabulation of French martyrs was introduced by Foxe into the 1570 edition of the A&M. It must have required a considerable investment of energy and research to prepare, and it was a substantial contribution to the work. Through it, and the accompanying tables of Spanish and German (Dutch) martyrs, Foxe clearly laid claim to situate the events in England within a European perspective - a claim that has frequently been ignored by later commentators. The table remained unchanged thereafter for the 1576 and 1583 editions - although a further edition of his key source, Jean Crespin, had appeared in 1582. By then, however, Crespin was dead, and the work was being updated by others, and the changes were principally to the post-1559 material which did not substantially alter what Foxe had derived from Crespin for this table. How did Foxe construct the table? In a prefatory essay to this edition, we outline the complex relationship between Foxe and the early editions of Crespin, and the extent of their mutual borrowings. It is clear, however, that Foxe could not read French. His knowledge of the French editions of Crespin - those of 1564 and 1570 - had, therefore, to be at second-hand. We must imagine that there was someone, perhaps in John Day's print-shop, whose familiarity with the French language enabled them to transcribe, or perhaps read, the text to Foxe. What is still more impressive is that, from a detailed comparison of the material in the table, it is clear that he used, at least for some of the entries, the 1570 edition of Crespin. This had appeared in the early months of that year, just in time for Foxe to include the entries that were unique to it (e.g. Thomas Moutarde, who had not appeared in earlier versions of Crespin) in this table. In addition, Foxe indicates the other sources which he utilised in its compilation. He seems generally to have used them as confirming the veracity of Crespin, his origo princes. Heinrich Pantaleon's Martyrum historia [...] pars secunda (Basel, 1563) was an important source in this respect. Foxe's Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum […] pars prima (Basel, 1559) had been envisaged as a complementary and companion volume to Pantaleon's (as the particular titles indicate). By 1570, however, Foxe harboured an ambition to broaden his geographical and chronological scope. He ended the 1570 edition (Bk 12, p. 2296) holding out the prospect of a further volume in store, one which would both take the story forward from the accession of Elizabeth I, and also place it more evidently in an international context: 'Touchyng whose florishyng state [that of Queen Elizabeth I], her Princely reigne, and peaceable gouernement, with other things diuers and sondry incident to the same, and especially touchyng the great styres and alterations which haue happened in other foreine nations, and also partly among our selues here at home, for so much as the tractation hereof requireth an other Volume by it selfe, I shall therfore differre the reader to the next booke or Section insuyng: wherein (if the Lord so please to susteine me with leaue and lyfe) I may haue to discourse of all and singular such matters done and achiued in these our latter dayes and memory, more at large'. That no doubt explains why the table of the French martyrs ends with an otherwise inexplicable 'list' of miscellaneous martyrs that he has not included elsewhere in the table. They were those whom Crespin had included in his martyrology in 1564/1570, but whose deaths had falled after 17 November 1558. This was to be his marker for the putative, future volume. His other sources included Pierre de La Place, Commentaires de l'état de la religion et de la république sous les rois Henri & François seconds & Charles neuvième (1565) which he was able to access in 1570 in a Latin translation of the first part (Rerum in Gallia ob religionem gestarum libri tres, regibus Henrico secundo, ad illius quidam regni Finem, Francisco secundo, et Carolo nono) which had been published at Amsterdam. In one instance, discussed in the biographical list under 'Civaux', Foxe also referenced a manuscript source - 'ex scripto testimonio Senatus Genev[ensis]' for the martyrdom of one François Civaux. How Foxe had come by this reference, and why Crespin had not mentioned him in his martyrology, are discussed further in that biographical list.

Foxe's notion of the geographical boundaries of the kingdom of France was clearly somewhat defective. He includes some French-speaking martyrs from the Walloon provinces of Flanders (e.g. Thomas Calbergue; Nicolas Paul; Thomas Moutarde; Etienne de la Forge) and, at one point, acknowledged that this had been an error (1583, p. 912). More reasonably (since France had occupied most of Savoy in the years preceding the peace of Cateau-Cambrésis (1559)) he also includes some martyrs from the Haute-Savoie (Jean Pointet, Geoffroi Varagle). In one instance, he includes a martyr originating from the principality of Béarn (François Danville). Foxe's standard of accuracy is generally high, even though his transliteration of the place-names, personal-names and institutional affiliations occasionally gave him problems and there are some signs of occasional misunderstandings. These are noted in the individual biographical entries for those mentioned in the table, as relevant.

Foxe's techniques for summarising the often lengthy and substantiated narratives of the French martyrs in Crespin are interesting. In comparison with Crespin (especially in the 1570 edition, which is the one which most single-mindedly focuses on the French reformation) he shows markedly less interest in what had become seen (through Genevan eyes) as its 'nicodemite' elements. Guillaume Briçonnet, Lefèvre d'Etaples, Marguerite de Navarre, Gérard Roussel hardly appear. Given its rationale, this is hardly surprising. More remarkable is that the role of the leading French magisterial reformers - Guillaume Farel and, more particularly, Jean Calvin - hardly signifies at all. In selecting his material from Crespin, Foxe removed all references to the letters exchanged between Calvin and the French martyrs. Instead, he focused most on the details of their interrogations and their execution narratives. Crespin's sources were undeniably patchy - at one point, Foxe passes an acidic comment on the lack of precision in the record-keeping - but, in some instances, he had managed to acquire first-person narratives of their interrogations, and in others he seems to have had access to transcripts of the process-verbaux, the court records. Foxe summarised this material selectively, often intelligently, albeit carefully eliding elements which might require elaborate glossing, or which departed from the collective and overall picture of the triumphant, suffering martyrdom that he sought to create through this table.

Mark Greengrass
University of Sheffield

'Ex Ioan. Manlio in dictis Phil.' - i.e. Johannes Manlius' book, commonly known as 'De dictis Philippi Melancthonis' - in reality Locorum Communium Collectanea, a Joh. Manilo, pleraque ex lectionibus Ph. Melancthonis excerpta (Basil: 1563).

Foxe's account of the famous 'Affaire de la rue St-Jacques' in Paris carries the correct date but not the right year. As his source-note suggests, he was unsure whether to follow the date seemingly indicated in Crespin [1564], fol 872, which (in a misprint) dated it '1558' (corrected in later editions) and Pantaleon, who (correctly) dated it 1557. Foxe's instinct was to follow what he probably believed to be the more reliable French source, but (in this instance) it proved incorrect. Crespin's account came directly from Antoine de La Roche-Chandieu, Histoire des persécutions et martyrs de l'église de Paris: depuis l'an 1557, jusques au temps du roy Charles neuvième (Lyon: n.p., 1563), pp. 3-88. Chandieu proclaimed that he had researched his account carefully ('je n'ai rien mis dans ces escritures, que je n'aye eu de la main mesme de ceux qui sont morts ou apprins de leur bouche, quand ie les ay visitez en la prison, ou extrait des registres des greffes, ou veu de mes yeux ou receu des fidèles tesmoins' [Epistre, p. xxxv]). The incident centred around a forcible entry and mass arrest of the gathered church in Paris in the rue St-Iacques, opposite the Collège Du Plessis, one of the residential colleges of the University of Paris, originally endowed in 1322 by Geoffroi du Plessis and next door to the Sorbonne in the Latin Quarter. Those identified by Foxe as taking an active part in the raid or subsequent interrogations of those arrested include:- Antoine de Mouchy ('Doctor Democrates' in Foxe's text = leg. 'Démocharès', a reference to the Greek orator and stateman, a name adopted by Mouchy, apparently to avoid the popular sobriquet 'mouchard'), Inquisiteur de la foi and doctor of theology at the Sorbonne [Jöcher, 2]; Robert Céneau ('Cenalis' in Foxe's text), (1483-1560), bishop of Vence (1523), Riez (1530), Avranches (1532) [NBG, 9]; Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine; and M. Martine ['Martin' in Foxe's text, described as 'the kinges Attorney], in reality the procureur du roi at the Parlement of Paris. Foxe mentions the charge laid against the Paris community, that 'they assembled together to make a banket ['banquet'] in the night, and there putting out the candles, they went together, Iacke with Iille (as the[y] sayde) after a filthy and beastly maner […] and other heinous crimes'. The accusation of the discovery of sexual license, including infanticide, under the cover of darkness seems to have been made, and was echoed in the diary of Claude Haton, curé of Provins (L. Bourquin, ed. Mémoires de Claude Haton 3- vols, Collection de document inédits sur l'histoire de France (Histoire Moderne) [Paris: Editions du Comité des Travaux historiques et scientifiques, 2001-6], 1). It most likely originated in a publication by Antoine de Mouchy, and, interestingly, he seems to have copied the passage directly from the medieval chronicle of Gregory of Tours (see L. Racaut, 'Accusations of infanticide on the eve of the French wars of religion.' In Infanticide: Historical perspectives on child murder and concealment, 1550-2000, ed. by M. Jackson (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 18-34). The protestants (probably Antoine de La Roche-Chandieu himself) prepared two documents in their defence, one a manuscript 'remonstrance' for the king, and the second a printed 'Apologie ou defense des bons chrestiens contre les ennemis de l'Eglise catholique'. The first was summarised in La Roche-Chandieu, op.cit., and the second was reproduced in full. Both texts found their way into later editions of Crespin (Crespin [1582], fol. 427 et seq) but had not appeared earlier. Foxe seems to have known them only through the brief summaries initially printed in Crespin [1564]. His résumé of the interrogations and trials of those arrested at this time is a summary of that same source, with a small, but interesting addition from Pantaleon, book 11, check to the effect that protestant princes and cities, meeting at the Diet of Worms (11 September - 8 October 1557), in concert with Swiss protestant cities, made strong representations against the arrests of those concerned. These arrests, trials and executions can be followed in detail in the accompanying notes on the individuals mentioned in this passage.

Foxe does not elaborate, naturally enough, on the fact that a good number of those imprisoned in the wake of the Affaire de la rue St-Iacques submitted ambiguous testimonies of their protestant loyalties, or were sufficiently ambiguous under cross-examination for them to be sentenced merely to witness the burning of others who had been sentenced. Crespin had, by contrast, followed La Roche-Chandieu in deploring their cowardice.

Foxe's Table of martyrs from Spain was introduced for the first time into the 1570 edition. It was clearly an attempt to complement the much richer and more fully developed tables that preceded it of the 'German' and 'French' martyrs. Like them, Foxe sought to impose order upon his disparate material by organising it in tabular form - as he had already done elsewhere in the volume - under 'Persecutors', 'Martyrs' and 'The Causes'. The typographical complexity of these pages continued to impose extraordinary demands on his printers, with double-columned ruled tables, each column broken into three parts on occasion, incorporating headers and catch-words into the table, and including glosses to one side.

Foxe was seeking to situate the events in England within a wider European perspective - his claim here has often been ignored by later commentators. He attempted to bring together into an ambitious organised compilation all that had been discovered about those who had suffered for the faith, at least in respect of the continental protestant martyrological circles in which he situated himself. He also wanted to say something to his contemporaries about the Spanish Habsburg dynastic empire, a point which implicitly underpins the narrative. For Foxe was an important source in creating the Elizabethan 'Black Legend' of Spain (see A. G. Kinder, 'Creation of the Black Legend: literary contributions of Spanish protestant exiles' Mediterranean Studies 6 (1996), 67-78).

Only one Spanish martyr account - that of the Flemish sculptor, working in Sanlucár, known as 'Roque' ['Rochus'] - had appeared in the 1563 edition. That text - evidently a 'filler' to complete the final page of the volume - was (as Foxe states) 'taken oute of a booke of Franciscus Enzinas written to Phillip Melanton' (1563, p. 1041). This is an unambiguous reference to Francisco de Enzinas [=Franciscus Dryander], Historia de statu belgico deque religione hispanica, which Foxe tells us in the subsequent 1570 edition, he had consulted in the Oporinus print-shop, where he used it to furnish his account of the life and martyrdom of Francisco de San Román: 'The storye hereof is at large set forth by Francis Encenas, a notable learned man, who also himself was prisoned ye same time at Bruzels: whose booke written in Latine, I myselfe have sene and read, remaining in the hands of John Oporin at Basill'. The same source had probably also been consulted by Heinrich Pantaleon, and it therefore presumably informs his material on the Spanish martyrs, upon which Foxe also draws.

In the 1570 table of Spanish martyrs, Foxe broke off to furnish, by way of introduction to the auto de fé at Valladolid, a description of the 'execrable Inquisition of Spayne'. Foxe could hardly have resisted making something of the potentially emotive and rich material furnished by the Inquisition. In Foxe's eyes it could hardly be other than the exemplification of catholic cruelty, clerical overlordship and injustice. By 1570, Foxe had already been sensitised to the issue of the Inquisition, perhaps through the 'history' of Francisco de Enzinas (=Dryander), in which the judicial proceedings, rituals and cruelty of the Inquisition had been emphasised, but also through his 'memoirs', which Foxe apparently also knew (e.g. J. de Savignac [ed.] Francisco de Enzinas. Les Mémorables de Francisco de Enzinas [Brussels: Les editions de la Libraire encyclopédique, 1963], pp. 180-3). Foxe's direct source for the passage on the inquisition and the subsequent Valladolid auto de fé (Foxe does not actually use the term) on 21 May 1559 was the French edition of Crespin. He tells us so: 'Ex quinta parte Marti Gallic Impresse pag 474'. This constitutes an initial problem, since Crespin's passage in the French 1564 edition of the martyrology (Crespin [1564]) was in book 7, pp. 904-5; and in the 157 French edition (Crespin [1570]) it was in book 6, fols 536B-538B. This seems to be one of the comparatively rare occasions where Foxe mis-references his text. This may not, however, have been his only source. He also refers to 'the story of the sayde Inquisition being set out in the French tongue'. This can only refer to Reinaldo Gonzales de Montes [Montanus], Sanctae Inquisitionis Hispanicae Artes aliquot detectae, ac palam traductae (Heidelberg, 1567), which enjoyed considerable popularity in the later sixteenth century, including at least one in French (1568), three further Latin, three English, four Dutch and three German editions before the end of the century. Quite why Foxe did not refer directly to the Latin edition is a mystery, although it seems possible that John Day was a considerable promoter of the Montanus text, and may even have been responsible for a good number of these editions himself, including the French translation. In its English translation of 1568, (A discovery & playne declaration of sundry subtill practises of the holy inquisition of Spayne […]) its translator, Vincent Skinner, mentioned that its publication was something of a 'taster' for the new edition of Foxe's martyrology ('as a taste in the meane space, whiles the booke of Martires be finished, wherein thou shalt have a most plentifull and notable History of the like matter and argument' (cited Kinder, p. 114).Foxe was certainly aware of the discrepancies of the sources to note that they tallied different numbers of martyrs from the Valladolid Inquisition, from which he inferred (correctly) that some of the victims had been returned to prison. At all events, the passage serves as a notable example of the proceedings of the Inquisition.

Crespin's description (like Montanus') includes the notable presence at the auto de fé of Princess Joanna ('Dame Iane'), widow of the prince of Portugal and sister to Philip II as well as Don Carlos ('Prince Charles'), the king's son and the Comte de Buendia. Crespin (along with Montanus) describes the 'sanbenito' or yellow garment worn by the prisoners and the 'coroza' ('coracas') or paper mitres that they were obliged to wear on their heads. Foxe emphasises (as do Montanus and Crespin) the role of the Spanish clergy in the spectacle - Melchior Cano, the famous Dominican preacher who had been bishop in the Canary Islands, the archbishop of Seville ('Senille'), and the bishops of Palencia ('Valence').and Orense. The names of the martyrs recorded by Foxe reveal with what difficulty he struggled to transliterate the sometimes very different renditions of names in Crespin and Montanus. The official record of the Valladolid auto de fé survives in numerous copies. The comparison with Foxe's account reveals that he includes some individuals as martyrs who, in reality, were relaxed and returned to prison (Pedro Sarmiento, Luís de Rojas and Juan de Ulloa).

Foxe was certainly aware how patchy and incomplete his treatment of protestant prosecution in the Spanish peninsula had been. Even in the case of the Valladolid trial, he mentions at the end of the account that 37 other prisoners in Valladolid were 'reserved to another tragedy and spectacle of that bloody inquisition', the number and phrase coming directly from Crespin's 1564 French edition (Actes des martyrs, p. 906: Actiones et monimenta (1570), p. 1065). How Crespin arrived at the figure of '37' is a mystery. There were 7 further autos de fé in Valladolid through to 1565, where 241 protestants were paraded, of whom 89 were burned, 23 of them in effigy (figures from Kinder, op. cit., p. 114). Foxe's supply of materials on the Spanish peninsula was much more restricted. He used extensively what was available to him in Heinrich Pantaleon (lib. 5), supplementing it with information from Crespin and Montanus, especially on the Valladolid martyrs of 1559. He realised, however, that there was probably much of which he was probably ignorant. He intimated as much: '…divers others haue bene in the sayd countrey of Spayne, whose hartes God had marvellously illuminated and stirrup up, both before and also since the coming in of the Inquisition …. Albeit theyr names are as yet are vnknowne, for that the storyes of that countrey bee not yet come to light, but I trust shortly shall, as partly some intelligence I haue thereof' ([1570], p. 1062; [1583], p. 930). He added for good measure: 'By the vigour and the rigour of thys Inquisition, many good and true servauntes of Jesus Christ have been brought to death, especially in these latter dayes …The names and stories of whom, partlye we will here recite…..The other which be not yet come to our knowledge we will differre, till further intelligence and oportunitie, by the Lordes ayde shall serve hereafter ([1570], p. 1062; [1583], p. 931). Foxe must have been acutely aware that the lack of an organised evangelical community, let alone formed churches in the Spanish peninsula, acted as a crippling weakness in his information flows. That said, the table remained unchanged thereafter for the 1576 and 1583 editions. This was despite the fact that a further edition of his key source, Jean Crespin, had appeared in 1582. He appears to have made no effort to make, or exploit, contacts with the small Spanish protestant exile community in London that would have provided him with valuable information on these matters in the later editions.

M. Greengrass
University of Sheffield

Judges 14:2

Matthew 10: 24

John 16: 2

1 Peter 3: 17

Matthew 5: 14

Matthew 10: 18, 20, 32

Acts 5: 29

Psalm 2

At the end of the table of Italian martyrs, Foxe turns to a summary account of the gathering persecution of the Waldensian (Fr: Vaudois; It: Valdesi) communities on either side of the Alps. This enables him to create a powerful interlinked narrative, bringing together the targeted elimination of two Waldensian rural communities in Provence in 1545-6 with the parallel campaign in 1560-1 in Calabria. Foxe's objective was, at least in part, to demonstrate that there was an underlying pattern to these events and their chronology. They both involved the state-sponsored terror of innocent individuals and communities. This enabled him to ignore conveniently the difficult question as to whether those being persecuted in Calabria were (in the strict sense that Foxe understood it) protestants. It also enabled him to stretch the otherwise rather strict conventions about the proofs of the status of martyrdom, necessarily based upon individual proof-statements of faith, to encompass the possibility of group martyrdom. 'Divers that suffered in the kingdome of Naples' 'Lxxxviij Martyrs in one day, with one butcherlye knife, slayne like shepe' was a more spectacular kind of bloodshed that Foxe had documented hitherto in his narrative ([1570], p. 1073).

The Waldensian presence in the kingdom of Naples had existed from the thirteenth of Montalto - San-Sisto, San-Vincenzo, Argentina, etc - were largely founded by them, encouraged by the local nobility. Girolamo Zanchi, a sixteenth-century contemporary in a position to know, spoke of their being around 4,000 Calbrian Waldensians, although some contemporaries put the estimate even higher. The progressive acceptance of reformed doctrines and ecclesiology from 1532 made them much more a subject of likely persecution. When the latter eventually started, it owed a good deal to support within the Neapolitan Hispanic state, working in collaboration with the nobility and senior clergy. The marquis Salvador Spinelli was signor of La Guardia and San-Sisto and it was his decision (at the instigation of his chaplain, Anania) to denounce his Waldensian inhabitants to Cardinal Ghislieri (later Pope Pius V) that was became crucial to the launching of the persecution in 1560, in which contemporaries estimate that around 2,000 individuals were executed. Foxe's estimates of the massacre were cautiously based on the evidence which he had to hand, and heavily under-estimated the extent of the loss of life. For further details, see Crespin/Benoit, 3, p. 34-64; Lombard; Galiffe; Amabile, vol 1, pp. 235-

Further information about what happened in the persecution of the Waldensians of Calabria, and particularly about the continuing brutality and repression of the following year, 1561, which would be even more severe than that mentioned by Foxe in 1560, continued to emerge in the 1560s and 1570s. Crespin's later editors referred to Job Fincelius [Fincel], Traité des merveilles de notre temps which was well informed and graphic on the subject. André Hondorf, Calendarium historiarum oder der Heilige Märtyrer istorien (Frankfurt-am-Main, 1575) also contributed some further information by which protestant Europe could gradually piece together what had happened. By the time of the last edition to which he was able to contribute, Foxe had seemingly no further energies for pursuing the fate of martyrs whose Protestantism might, if investigated more closely, not have withstood the scrutiny.

Foxe was very aware of the weakness of his sources for what were, even in 1570, comparatively recent developments in the horn of Italy, culminating in 1560. Once more Foxe relies exclusively on the treatment of the subject in Pantaleon, 11 (p. 337-339 - the end folios of this work being paginated rather than foliated), although there was more material theoretically available to him in Crespin's 1564 edition (Crespin [1564], p. 969 et seq;, further amplified in Crespin [1570], fol 544A et seq.). Crespin, in this instance, was particularly well informed because of the existence of the Italian church in Geneva and its growing links with the Waldensians in Piedmont and elsewhere in the Italian peninsula. Crespin graphically presents the persecution in Calabria through the eyes of those missionaries sent from Geneva as schoolmasters and preachers to minister to them. Because Foxe did not draw on this material, he therefore did not include the rich letters from prison of Giovanni Luigi Pasquale [Fr: Paschal/Pascal], firstly at Fuscaldo, and then at Cosenze and finally in Naples and Rome that Crespin had printed in his edition of 1564 (Crespin [1564], p. 969; Crespin [1570], fols 544). Instead, he concentrated on two pieces of evidence that had been furnished already by Pantaleon.

The first piece of evidence was an extract from a letter written by Simon Fiorello ('Simon Florellus'), an evangelical preacher at Chiavegna ('Citie Clauenna') to Guilelmus Gratalorus, an Italian professor of medicine at the University of Basel. Fiorello was a native of Caserte who had gained a doctorate in 1553. Taking up exile in Geneva for his protestant views, he became the first catéchiste of the Italian Genevan church in 1556 before becoming a minister at Chiavegna (or possibly Tirano). See J.-B. G. Galiffe, Le refuge italien de Genève aux XVI et XVIIe siècles (Geneva and Paris: H. Georg and G. Fischbacher, 1881), p. 162. Pantaleon had presumably had the letter from Gratalorus, his colleague in Basel, and printed the extract (fol. 337A). The letter mentions the publication of an account of the Calabrian repression in Rome and Venice. This was the pamphlet, written by the Genevan pastor from Naples, Scipio Lentulo, who was preaching in the Grisons and Vaudois valleys in 1559-60 and in active contact with protestant elements in the Italian peninsula at that time. For an edition of the pamphlet, see T. Gay (ed.), Scipio Lentolo. Historia delle grandi e crudeli persecutioni fatte ai tempi nostri (Torre Pellice, 1906).

Consentia - Cosenza.

1 Corinthians 10: 13

Sainte Sixte - 'San-Sisto'

'Montalte' - Montalto

'Ascanius Caracciolus' - Galeas Caracciolo, marquis de Vico, the pre-eminent figure and patron of the Italian church in Geneva.

The second piece of evidence is a copy and translation of a letter sent from Montalto to Rome containing news of the persecutions in Calabria. Like Pantaleon, where he found the source text, he did not know to whom it was addressed, or from whom it had come, but he followed him in dating it to 11 June 1560. In reality, the letter was from Acanio Caraccioli, the nephew of the marquis di Buccianico, signor di Montaltro (mentioned by Foxe in his text as 'Buccianus'), one of the agents of the viceroy of Naples, writing to the duke of Urbino. Pantaleon had mistranscribed the date (it was in fact a year later - 1561) and had been printed in Rome, where the progress of the repression in Naples was followed with intense interest by those close to the new pontiff, Pope Pius IV. The letter is reproduced in Giovanni Pietro Vieusseux (ed.), Archivio Storico Italiano vol 9 ('Narrazioni e documenti sulla storia del regno di Napoli dall'anno 1522 al 1667, raccolti e ordinati... da Francesco Palermo') (Florence, 1846), p. 193.

Matthew 11: 13

John 14: 6

1 Peter 4: 14

Ecclesiastes 1: 2

Psalms 16: 5

Matthew 10: 25

Romans 8: 16 and 38

Foxe's knowledge of protestant martyrs from the Italian peninsula was as patchy as that for the Spanish peninsula. He indicated as much in the prelude to his table, where he admitted that his information for the kingdom of Naples and Sicily - then part of the patrimony of the Spanish Habsburgs - was almost completely deficient. He cites just one example of an unnamed Genevan who went to Sicily as a protestant missionary, only to end up being prosecuted and burned by the Inquisition, presumably at Palermo. The individual concerned here was probably Jacopo Bonello ('Jacobus Bovellus') whom he mentions later in the context of the Calabrian Waldensian repression. He does not seem to have made the connection.

For the main table of Italian martyrs, his sources were, as he himself explicitly states, Pantaleon (lib 6), Crespin 'and others'. Of the 'others', the most important source was undoubtedly Celio Secondo Curione (1503-1569). The latter was a distinguished Italian humanist who had cultivated Augustinian views among the evangelical circles of Turin in his youth. Like many of the Italian evangelisti, he found himself under threat of persecution and fled, first to Venice, then Ferrara (1541), briefly to Lucca, and then to Switzerland. He spent some years in Lausanne before finally moving to Basel to be the professor of rhetoric at the university there, where he published extensively. He maintained extensive literary contacts with the Italian evangelisti in the 1550s, when there seemed still much to play for in the evolution of Italian ecclesiastical reform. There is nothing in Foxe which had not already appeared in Heinrich Pantaleone, Martyrum historia (1563) and the Historia rerum in Ecclesia gestarum (1563). For Curione's biography, see the Dizionario biografico degli Italiani, (Rome: Istituto dell Encylopedia Italiana, 1960-), 31, pp. 443-449 and refs. In one further instance, Foxe had also picked up some information relating to the execution of two protestant former monks in Rome from Johann Manlius, Locorum communium collectanea (2 parts, Basel, 1563), a widely-consulted common-place book by protestant humanists.

Only at one point does Foxe break from the tabular presentation of information concerning the Italian martyrs to provide more detailed documentation. This was in respect of the story of Pomponio Algieri ('Pomponius Algerius'). He chose to translate the letter that Algieri wrote, reproduced in Pantaleon, fols 329A-332B, and the printers were instructed to offset it with elaborate border woodblocks to emphasise further the status Foxe accorded it (1570, pp. 1070-1072). Algieri had been arrested on suspicion of heresy by the Venetian authorities and imprisoned there in 1555. Crespin provided extensive documentation relating to his trial in the French editions (Crespin [1564], p. 674 et seq; Crespin [1570], fols 366 et seq) but Foxe concentrated uniquely on the material conveniently available to him in Latin from Pantaleon. The reasons that he cites for interrupting his table to furnish this letter are interesting, noting the impact of Plato's 'Phaedo' (the Socratic Dialogue on the Immortality of the Soul) upon 'Thebrotus' (it is not clear to whom Foxe is referring here) who was 'so moved and perswaded therewith, that he caste hym selfe down headlong from an high wall, to be rid out of thys present life'. Foxe's commitment to the humanist project of the power of rhetorical persuasion is fully evident here. Pomponio Agieri wrote his letter from what he described, with appropriate irony, as the 'agreeable orchard' ('ex delectabili pomario') of the Leonine prison in Venice, so-called because of its proximity to the bronze lion statue in the piazza San Marco, and renowned for its squalid and cramped conditions. The letter was addressed (apparently) to exiled protestants from the Venetian territories now north of the Alps. Foxe cites it in extenso. As Pantaleon explained, he (and possibly Foxe independently) had received a copy of it from Celio Secondo Curione, the professor of rhetoric at the university of Basel. It is dated 12 August 1555 in Pantaleon, which is misprinted as 12 July in Crespin (Crespin/Benoit, 2, p.276). The letter itself is infused with intense Biblical references, particularly to the Pauline epistles and Gospels.

M. Greengrass
University of Sheffield

Crespin's account glosses these various names: 'Vaudois' from 'Pierre Waldo', their presumed founder; 'Lollard' in England, Poland ('Sarmatia') and Livonia; 'Turelupins' ['Turrelupius'] in Artois and Flanders, Chaignars or Chienars ('Chagnardes') in Dauphiné and Piedmont. Foxe's explanation of the latter 'because they liued in places open to the Sunne, and without house or harborough' is not in the Crespin narrative.

For this meeting, and the background in Avignon, see Marc Venard, Réforme protestante, Réforme catholique dans la province d'Avignon au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1993). The Vice-Legate in Avignon was Philibert Ferrier, bishop of Ivrea.

Rieux is one of the bishoprics in the French Midi, now in the Haute-Garonne. To whom this exactly refers is unclear since there was a prolonged vacancy in the episcopal see.

The narrative of the bookseller in Aix-en-Provence is related in Crespin [1560], 97A-B; and also in Pantaleon, fol 122. He was subsequently burnt at Avignon.

Foxe follows closely here the narrative of events as reported in Crespin [Crespin/Benoit, 1, p. 391] and Pantaleon [fol 123]. 'Venice' ['Venise' or 'Venasque'] is the small town not far from Carpentras from which the Comtat Venaissin had its name, an adjunct of the papal territories of Avignon until 1791.

The ecclesiastical and political significance of Cardinal François de Tournon (1489-1562), especially in south-east France, was considerable. He had founded the collège de Tournon in 1536 and increasingly devoted himself to the prosecution of heresy in the region, especially after 1547.

In this encounter, Jacques Reynaud, sieur d'Aillens reminded Bartholomé Chassanée, premier president of the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence that the protestants were just as entitled to legal representation as the rats which Chassenée had stood counsel for in 1521. The affair was recounted by Chassanée in his famous, and beautifully-illustrated Catalogue gloriae mundi, printed at Lyon in 1528. It was a well-publicised case which somewhat made his legal reputation. The possibility for prosecuting animals had long existed in France, especially before ecclesiastical courts. The rats were accused of stealing the grain of the bishop of Autun ('Authun') and were likely to be excommunicated. Chassanée successfully defended them on the grounds that their failure to appear before the court was because the summons had only been issued to some of the rats of the diocese, whereas (in reality) all of them were implicated in the affair. The court decided that the summons had to be reformulated. When they failed to appear a second time, Chassanée argued that his clients could not attend the court because they were otherwise engaged in the preparation of a great migration. In the final hearing, he pleaded that the rats were in fear of their lives and the courtroom was not a safe place for them. They legitimately could not be expected to attend the hearing. The case was postponed sine die. Chassanée went on to produce a learned treatise dealing with all aspects of the legal prosecution and defence of animals (Consilium primum….de excommunicatione animalium, insectorum (1531). The bailliage ('bailiwyke') of 'Laussois' is 'l'Auxois', the country around Auxerre in Burgundy.

This passage follows closely Crespin (Crespin/Benoist, 1, p. 392-4 - i.e, Crespin [1560], fol 100A-101B and Pantaleon, fols 125-116. In December 1540, the French king François I ordered the arrêt of the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence to be carried out, rejecting a last-minute appeal for clemency. Shortly afterwards, Guillaume du Bellay, sieur de Langey ('Longeay'), lieutenant du roi in Piedmont, was despatched by the royal council to investigate the claims of the Vaudois and he reported favourably on their monarchical loyalties, leading to a conditional royal pardon for the Vaudois at Mérindol provided that they abjured within three months.

The lengthy and detailed confession, to which Foxe makes reference here is set out, as Foxe says in the gloss to this passage, in Crespin's Recueil of 1556 (p. 862-879), and then reprinted in Pantaleon (fols 130-137). It is summarized in later editions of Crespin's martyrology. Foxe chose to provide the even more succinct précis of it in Sleidan's Commentaries (Commentarii lib. 16, fol 218) which he then placed at the end of the narrative (p. 954) so as not to interrupt the flow of the text. The document was dated 6 April 1541 and carried the names of André and Martin Mainard as leading signatories, two of those cited in the original arrêt against the 19 Vaudois of Mérindol. It joined another confession, apparently submitted by Cabrières d'Avignon ('Cabriers') in the Comtat Venaissin, both of which were sent to the bishops of Cavaillon and Carpentras for their opinion. The documentm itself, at least in the form in which we have it, reflects the increasing influence of Geneva among the Vaudois. It, and the equivalent one from Cabrières, was presented to Jacopo ('Giacomo') Sadoleto, bishop of Carpentras and the vice-legate of Avignon, meeting at Cabrières ('Cabriers') which was part of his diocese. According to the later Histoire Ecclésiastique (1580), Sadoleto's reaction was that the confessions might be accepted as orthodox if some revisions were made to them. It is noticeable that this does not appear in the earlier narratives, upon which Foxe relies. He may have played some part in restraining the vice-legate in Avignon from executing the arrêt of Mérindol in the papal-controlled territories of the Comtat Venaissin in 1542 (as Foxe recounts), but his sympathis for the Vaudois should not be overestimated (see Marc Venard, 'Jacques Sadolet, évêque de Carpentras, et les Vaudois', Bolletino della società di studi valdesi 143 (1978), 44-49).

Foxe follows closely here the narrative in Pantaleon, fol 138 rather than Crespin (Crespin/Benoist, p. 402). The individuals concerned with the attempts to enforce the arrêt of 18 November 1541 against the Vaudois of Mérindol were Jean Durandi, conseiller au parlement d'Aix-en-Provence; with Pietro Ghinucci, bishop of Cavaillon from 1541 and Antoine Filhol, archbishop of Aix-en-Provence from 1541. Their efforts were without success until the death of Chassanée as premier president of the court, and his successor. The local figures involved in these deliberations included André Meynard, the bailli ('baylife') of Mérindol and others.

Here, Foxe refers to the arrival in post of Jehan Meynier, sieur d'Oppède in December 1543 as premier president of the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence. He held lands in the region between Cabrières d'Avignon and Mérindol and, as Foxe was only too keen to emphasise, had material interests (in addition to the fears of the apparently increasing dangers of heresy and division in the province). In addition, however (in a way that protestant accounts did not mention) he was concerned about rumours that the Vaudois were organizing themselves for self-defence, taking advantage of the natural strongholds I the Luberon. There were rumours that they intended to rebel and turn Provence into a canton after the Swiss fashion. Later in 1543, the Vaudois of Cabrières successded in fortifying their village, whilst those of Mérindol pillaged the abbey of Sinanque. The fears of a rebellion akin to the Great Peasants' War of 1524-6 in Germany were important in enabling Meynier to secure the letters-patent of 1 February 1545 by which the original arrêt of 18 November 1540 was to be enforced.

The execution of the letters patent of 1 February 1545 were delayed until April 1545 to allow the military forces under Antoine Escalin des Aimars, baron de la Garde ( known as 'Poulin de la Garde') to be mustered. From 18 April 1545 the army moved along the southern edge of the Luberon ['Libron']. Mérindol and Cabrières were among the last to be devastated. La Motte, Lourmarin ('Lormarin'), Villelaure, Saint-Martin de Castillon and other villages were caught up in the operation. Its savagery became widely noted through Europe: 'Crudelitas plusquam Scythica' comments the marginal gloss in Pantaleon's account (fol. 144), which Foxe follows closely in his narrative. For details of the military operation, see P. Gaffarel, 'Les massacres de Cabrires et de Mérindol en 1545' Revue Historique 101 (1911), 241-64.

French royal authorities initially applauded the success of the military operation eliminating the Vaudois villages in Provence (the French king is reputed to have commented: 'C'est une belle defaicte' and Pope Paul III awarded Meynier several honours. However, within a few years, François I's successor, Henri II was persuaded to issue letters patent requiring Meynier, Polin de la Garde and others to answer charges before the Parlement of Paris. Their trial lasted over six months until February 1551. Only one of the defendants was ultimately found guilty but it took Meynier several years thereafter to recover all his possessions. The grisly details of Meynier's death are taken from Pantaleon, fol. 145. The later activities of Meynier d'Oppède's relatives, Louis de Vaine and Pierre Duranti, against the protestants of Aix-en-Provence, were more fully related in Crespin's account (Crespin/Benoist, 1, p. 418).

This is the one element of this section which Foxe added in the 1570 edition to the narrative he had provided in 1563. He also departs from his major sources, Pantaleon and Crespin. His objective was clearly to deepen the historical context to the persecution at Mérindol and Cabrières. Foxe wants to reinforce his fundamental message, announced in the preface to the 1570 edition (the 'Protestation to the whole Church of England') that it had been in the course of the early thirteenth century that persecution of God's true church had begun in earnest: 'then was the clere sunne shine of Goids word overshadowed with mists and darknes'. It was also an opportunity, however, to for him to confront what seemed to be potentially divergent accounts of the origins of medieval heresy in the region. From the earliest edition of the martyrology, Foxe had emphasised the significance of the Waldensians, placing their origins among the poor of Lyon (pp. 41-46). In so doing, he had allowed only a passing sentence or so to the Albigensian crusade. Now he doubled back briefly to the relationship between the Albigensians and the Waldensians, admitting the possibility that they might be movements with very different origins. He acknowledges that this was the view presented in Paolo Aemilio Veronensis, In Franciæ Antiqvitatem Libri Tres - but only to question it through adducing other sources, notably Bernard Lutzenburg, Catalogus haereticorum (Cologne, 1523). Both these references Foxe is most likely to have acquired at second hand through the compilation of the Magdeburg Centuries. It is with some relief that he returns to his primary source, Sleidan, once more since he had emphasised 'their continuance and doctrine' - and that was the message that Foxe wanted to leave with his readers.

This passage was not included in the reprinted Crespin text, but was incorporated into Pantaleon's narrative from the original Crespin edition of 1554. It was the briefest of indications that the ecclesiastical prosecution of the Vaudois had been active through much of the 1530s. The archbishop of Aix-en-Provence in this period was Pierre Filhol ['Philholi'].

The careers of the magistrates in the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence mentioned in this passage are evoked in F. Vindry, Les parlementaires français au XVIe siècle 2 vols (Paris: H. Champion, 1909-1912). For Barthélemi Chassané [var: Chasseneuz - Foxe refers to him as 'Barthellemewe Chassane' in the 1563 edition], nominated premier president there in 1531, see Fleury Vindry, 1, p. 20. For Thomas Cuisinier [var: Cuissinier; Cousinier], sieur de Beaujay, also premier president at the Parlement, Ibid., 1, p. 20. Nicolas de Mathieu, sieur du Revest et de Riez is probably the 'Lord of Revest' to whom the account refers.

This notorious arrêt of the Parlement of Aix-en-Provence was pronounced on 18 November 1540. The text was included in extenso in the Recueil and in editions of Crespin from 1560 onwards (Crespin/Benoit, 1, pp. 383-4) condemning 19 Vaudois to be burned, their property confiscated and their village at Mérindol destroyed. The names of those mentioned in the arrêt are rendered by Foxe as best he could, and their orthography differs in the various sources (cf A.-L. Herminjard, Correspondance des réformateurs dans les pays de la langue française [Geneva, 1866-1867], 6, p. 228 and l'Histoire memorable). They included André Maynard, bailli of Mérindol, François Maynard, Martin Maynard, Iacques Maynard, Michel Maynard, Iean Pom and his wife, Facy le Tourneur and his wife, Martin Vian and his wife, Iean Pallenq and his wife, Peyron Roi, Philippon Maynard, Iaques de Sangre, Me Leon Barberoux, Claude Fauyer de Tourves, M. Pomery et Marthe Pomery, his wife, Thomas Pallenq, and Guillaume le Normand.

For the story of the Bishop's banquet ('splendissimum convivium') and the subsequent clerical meeting in Avignon, reported in Crespin [1560], fol 91A-B; Crespin/Benoit, 1, pp. 385-6 and also in Pantaleon, fols 114-5. Those in attendance included Barthélemi Chassené, premier president of the Parlement, the Archbishop (not bishop, as stated by Foxe) of Aix-en-Provence, the Archbishop of Arles ('Aries' - Jean IX de Ferrier), Jacques Reynaud, sieur d'Aillens ('L. of Alenc'), the seigneur de Beaujeu ('Beauieu') and the sieur de Senas, conseiller au Parlement.

From the first edition of his martyrology in 1563, Foxe had included an extensive account of the Mérindol and Cabrières affair (1563, pp. 632-652). He had foreshadowed it much earlier in the book (p.46), providing a graphic preview of the affair. It would be his first attempt to deal with mass martyrdom. In that preview, he spoke of 800 people slain in the elimination of these two communities, 40 of them women. He reported that 25 people had died smoke inhalation and fire, locked in a barn that was set alight. He briefly alluded to the young man who was tied to an olive tree and tortured to death. When he returned to deal with the affair properly, it was to juxtapose the evidence for the 'cruelty' of the individual persecutors (on the one hand) with the determination and constancy of the persecuted. His insertion of this piece of text (more or less unchanged) after the narrative of the Calabrian Vaudois was undertaken for a specific purpose. He did not want to interrupt the formal table of French martyrs with too extensive a narrative excursion. Equally, he relished the opportunity to highlight material which demonstrated (as he saw it) 'the furious crueltie' of the French king in an incident which had reverberated widely around western Europe. By placing the narrative adjacent to that of the Waldensians in Calabria he intimated that there was continuity and an underlying pattern to the persecution of the (largely rural) Vaudois. By juxtaposing these two narratives, Foxe was also able somewhat to obscure the more difficult questions about Waldensian beliefs prior to the reformation, and the extent to which they accorded with magisterial Protestantism, as Foxe would have understood it.

Foxe was all too aware that there was a considerable literature available on the massacres of the Waldensians of Provence in 1545 and 1546. He explicitly notes that he cannot present all the primary material, or even recount the history at full length because of its bulk. That said, however, he devotes over 25 pages to it, treating it in a major and exemplary fashion. There were already other narratives available of the persecution of the Waldensians in Provence. Jean Crespin had included an abbreviated account of the affair in the initial edition of his martyrology in 1554 (Crespin [1554], pp. 656-666). Elements from this had been incorporated into Sleidan's Commentaries, first published in 1555, and translated into English in 1560 as A famouse cronicle of oure time… As Foxe said, much earlier in the 1563 edition (p.46) this was the account that he would rely on for his primary narrative of this affair. But Crespin already knew in 1554 that there was more to be said about the affair - as he said his account had been inserted then 'pour en toucher comme en passant ce qui est à present le plus necessaire pour l'instruction des fideles, jusqu'à ce que plus amplement toute l'histoire en soit redigee par escrit, comme elle en soit rédigée par escrit, comme elle est tres digne'. Geneva's contacts with the Vaudois communities in Provence had been somewhat strengthened in the aftermath of the persecution by exiles from the region, especially after 1550 - see G. Audisio, 'The first Provençal Refugees in Geneva (1545-1571)' French History 19 (2005), 385-400. It was no doubt on the basis of their information that Crespin was able to publish his extensively documented Histoire memorable de la persecution & saccagement du people de Mérindol et Cabrières in 1556. This was the account that became integrated into later editions of Crespin in extenso (Crespin [1560], fols 88A-117A; Crespin/Benoit, 1, pp. 381-419), and also into Pantaleon, lib. 5 (fols 111-145). It concentrates our attention on the persecution which began with the legal decision of 18 November 1540 pronouncing the destruction of the village of Mérindol, which reached its claim in 1545-6. In reality, however, the efforts of the ecclesiastical authorities to eliminate the Provençal Vaudois had begun at least a decade earlier. For background accounts to the Vaudois in Provence, see G. Audisio, Les Vaudois du Luberon. Une minorité en Provence (1460-1560) (Mérindol, 1984) ; G. Audisio, Procès-verbal d'un massacre. Les vaudois du Luberon (avril 1545) (Aix-en-Provence, 1992); G. Audisio, Les 'Vaudois': naissance, vie et mort d'une dissidence (xiie-xvie siècle) 2 vols (Turin: Albert Meynier Editore, 1989). Marc Venard, Réforme protestante, Réforme catholique dans la province d'Avignon au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1993). On the massacre itself, see P. Gaffarel, 'Les massacres de Cabrières et de Mérindol en 1545' Revue Historique 101 (1911), 241-64.

Mark Greengrass
University of Sheffield

The monastic house of Abbadia Alpina, Pinerolo was, along with the Augustinian house at Oulx, traditionally one of the principal supporters of the Inquisition in the Alps. The San Gimignano near Angrogna has not been identified.

The disputation which Foxe recounts here marked the second phase of the campaign against the Vaudois protestants. It took place in late July or August 15560. Among the Vaudois protestants was the minister Scipione Lentolo - who may have provided much of the material for the account on which Foxe relied. Against them was the 27-year old Jesuit Antonio Possevino (in Foxe's account referred to as the 'Commaunder of Fossan'.

The ultimate phase of the hostilities against the Vaudois protestants in Piedmont was primarily military. The forces were led principally by Giorgio Coste, Conte della Trinità. Foxe follows his source through the military events in the Angrogna and Luserna valleys. It was a stalemate, despite some extraordinary mountain skirmishes, whose dramatic quality Foxe manages to recapture, through the suspension of hostilities for winter, with the campaign renewing in the Spring of 1561 before being brought to a conclusion by the treaty of Cavour on 5 June 1561. The treaty tacitly acknowledged the failure of the military campaign and accorded the people of the valleys a limited right of exercise of their religion and an indemnity for their past acts of rebellion, an example of a religious 'interim' that was not entirely lost in the debates about edicts of toleration in France.

This story first appeared in the 1563 edition of Foxe's martyrology (1563, p. 440). We have not located it in any of the common sources that Foxe used, and its origin is something of a mystery, but it was commonly repeated in English martyrologies after Foxe as a striking example of persecution being attributable to the Turks.

Although there had been earlier phases of persecution of the Vaudois of the Hautes-Alpes, notably in the period from 1536-8, the period up to 1555 is more notable for the degree to which the communities had been left to their own devices. No doubt it suited the purpose of a Genevan-based account of these events to begin the story in 1555, since that was the date when a more determined Genevan missionary effort in the valleys began. That was the year when Jean Calvin's supporters finally routed their opponents in the Genevan polity, and the young Genevan church felt strong enough to look outwards. Jean Vernou, originally from Poitiers and an associate of Calvin's journeyed there with a further minister in late 1554 or early 1555, preaching first at Balboutet and then at Fenestrelle, one of the leading Vaudois communities of the middle Angrogna. They went on to the village of Angrogna and established two 'temples' there (E. Cameron, The Reformation of the Heretics: the Waldenses of the Alps, 1480-1580 (Oxford: O.U.P., 1984), pp. 157-8 and refs). The story about 'Iohn Martin' (in reality 'Jean-Martin Trombaut') comes directly from Foxe's main narrative source (see Crespin/Benoit, 3, p. 116).

For the Vaudois settlement in and around Mérindol (Vaucluse) in the diocese of Cavaillon, and Cabrières d'Avignon (Vaucluse) in the diocese of Carpentras, see G. Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent. Persecution and Survival, c.1170-c.1570 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 190-193.

The Parlement in Turin issued an arrét in December 1555 ordering the imprisonment of those in the Angrogna valley who had received 'ministers coming from Geneva'. Then, on 22 December 1555 two magistrates (Agostino della Chiesa and Bartolomeo di Termes; the latter was replaced by Bartolomeo Emé, seigneur de St Julien - the 'President of S. Iulian' of Foxe's account) were despatched to conduct inquiries on heretic activities there. Foxe also follows his principal source in referring to the martyrdom of 'Barthelmew' the book-binder, not realising that he had, in fact, already included 'Barthélemy Hector', the individual in question, elsewhere in his table of French martyrs (p. 916 of the 1583 edition).

For the despatch of Georges Morel ['Georgus Maurellus'], native of Chanteloube (Saint-Crépin) in Dauphiné, and Pierre Masson ['Petrus Latomus'], native of Burgundy in 1530 on this delicate mission to the leading theologians of the emerging Reformed protestant opinions to Johann Oecolampadius (Basel), Berthold Haller (Bern) and Martin Bucer (Strasbourg), see G. Audisio, The Waldensian Dissent. Persecution and Survival, c.1170-c.1570 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 157-8; E. Cameron, The Reformation of the Heretics: the Waldenses of the Alps, 1480-1580 (Oxford: O.U.P., 1984), pp. 134-138; 180-182. Morel was arrested (10 September 1530) during his return journey and died at Dijon. For the distinctive role of the Waldensian 'barbes', see G. Audisio, Preachers by Night. The Waldensian Barbes (15th-16th Centuries) (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007).

The commissioners Agostino della Chiesa and Bartolomeo Emé, seigneur de St-Julien arrived in the Piedmontese valleys in March 1556. They issued orders to the communities they visited to conform to catholic rites and follow the traditional church. The Vaudois replied with a confession of faith, which Foxe replicates in accordance with his source. The confession reflects the clearly growing Genevan influence in the valleys.

This passage, a direct translation from Crespin's 1556 text, has in the past been taken to mean that there was a Vaudois 'synod' in Mérindol. If there was a meeting of some of the Vaudois barbes it should not be taken to mean that it resulted in formal documents such as a 'confession' of their faith. The Vaudois community does not seem to have worked with that kind of organisation, structure, and written documentation. See E. Cameron, The Reformation of the Heretics: the Waldenses of the Alps, 1480-1580 (Oxford: O.U.P., 1984), pp. 137-8.

On 27 November 1556, Henri II issued an edict enforcing the persecution of the Vaudois valleys. It was apparently not announced in the valleys, however, until after the winter was over, on 22 March 1557. Then further orders were given for the Vaudois (protestant) congregations to disband. 43 individuals from five communities in the Angrogna valley were summoned to appear before the Parlement in Turin. In response to the summons, the Vaudois wrote to Geneva to seek their assistance in petitioning for clemency before the French king.

Foxe follows here scrupulously the account given in Crespin [1560], fol 89A, ignoring later amplifications of the narrative undertaken by Crespin. For the history of Jean de Roma, including confirmation of much of Foxe's narrative, see G. Audisio, Le barbe et l'inquisiteur. Procès du barbe vaudois Pierre Griot par l'inquisiteur Jean de Roma (Apt, 1532) (Ax-en-Provence, 1979), introduction.

Geneva's response to the request from the Vaudois was to solicit further support from other protestant Swiss cantons and elsewhere. Guillaume Farel and Théodore de Bèze made the case before the senate of Berne on 23 April 1557. Berne sent an embassy to Zürich, which resulted in a diet between Berne, Zürich, Basel and Schaffhausen on 10 May which resulted in a conjoint Swiss embassy to the French king to request clemency towards the Vaudois. Meanwhile Farel and Bèze also went on to Strasbourg and secured the support of the duke of Württemberg and the Elector Palatine, who sent their own separate embassy. Henri II met both sets of ambassadors but gave them ambiguous responses. See A. Hollaender, 'Eine Schweizer Gesdantschaftsreise an den Französischen Hof im Jahre 1557', Historische Zeitschrift 33 (1892), 385-410; A. Pascal, 'Le Ambasciere dei cantoni e dei principi protestanti di Svizzera e Germania al Re di Francia in favore dei Valdesi durante il periodo della dominazione francese in Piemonte (1535-1559): contributi ad une storia diplomatica dei Valdesi di Piemonte', Bolletino storico-bibliografico subalpino 18 (1913), pp. 80-119; 316-36; and especially 19 (1914), 26-38. The 'minister of Angrongne named Geffrey Varialla' is Geoffroy Varagle, or Geofredo Varaglio, whom Foxe had already listed in his table of French martyrs.

The peace of Cateau-Cambrésis of 3 April 1559 restored Piedmont to the dukes of Savoy and removed the Parlement of Turin and the other instruments of French overlordship on almost all the eastern flanks of the Alps. The campaign to eliminate the Vaudois in Piedmont that began the following year may well have resulted from the clause in that peace treaty whereby the signatories bound one another to purge their own lands of heresy. Although Savoyard historiography tends to attribute the war to the personal religious zeal of Duke Emanuele Filiberto (1528-1580) it no doubt had its motives in reasons of state, connected to a reestablishment of ducal authority in the Piedmont valleys.

The first phase of the Piedmontese persecution opened with the promulgation of the edict of Nice on 15 February 1560, which prevented on pain of a fine and dispatch to the galleys, the hearing of 'Lutheran' preaching in the Luserna and other valleys. Foxe followed his source faithfully in this account of the opening conflict, mentioning the early victims, Mathurin, his wife, and Iehan (also known as 'Joanni delle Spinelle'), all from Carignan in the Luserna valley. The communities affected included Larche, Suse, Meane (near Cherasco) and Merano. Those leading the campaign against them included the Inquisitor General, Tomasso Jacomelli ('Thomas Iacomel') and M. Corbis (a 'Collatéral' or 'junior magistrate'). Charles des Comptes, signor d'Angrogna and governor of Mondovi acted as a mediator for the threatened communities.

The campaigns against the Vaudois protestants in Piedmont were dominated by skirmishes with local landlords, especially the Truchietti ('Truchet') of the Val Germanesca, Carlo and Bonifacio Truchietti, overlords of Le Perrier, a community in the valley.

Foxe continued to follow very closely his narrative source for the events in Piedmont, recounting here how, in April 1560, Philippe de Savoie, seigneur de Raconis, the cousin of the reigning duke of Savoy., Emanuele Philiberto, showed his sympathies for the Piedmontese valley communities. In June 1560, he was accompanied by Giorgio Coste, Conte della Trinità on a mission to Angrogna to try and negotiate an end to hostilities which threatened to descend into interminable skirmishes around local rivalries. As Foxe recounts, their efforts did not succeed.